After the recent financial aid overhaul of Columbia’s undergraduate colleges, Barnard is taking a closer look at its own offerings.

A few years ago, colleges nationwide instituted need-blind admissions. Now many universities, including Columbia, no longer include loans as part of financial aid packages. But Barnard is having some difficulty meeting students’ needs through similar measures.

According to Alison Rabil, director of financial aid at Barnard, the average Barnard student graduates with between $15,000 and $17,000 in debt.

“We hope that over the next few years that will go down, although it may not go down as much as it would for a student at Columbia,” Rabil said.

Currently, 41 percent of Barnard students receive grant money from the college, and 60 percent receive some kind of financial aid from grants, loans, or work-study.

“We do a good job in making sure that every student who wants to come to Barnard can,” Rabil said. “That’s not to say that it’s easy, but we make it very possible for students to graduate with a reasonable if not minimal amount of debt.”

Students emphasized the importance of financial aid in allowing them to attend Barnard.

“Without it, I definitely wouldn’t be here,” Rachel Romesburg, BC ’08, said. “I come from West Virginia, which is one of the poorest states. I guess that I am one of those students that makes the population a little more diverse.”

Barnard’s financial aid capacity is limited by the fact that, unlike other prestigious colleges, it does not have a large endowment.

“It’s not an option for Barnard to take an extra percentage out of our endowment to contribute to a financial aid initiative,” Rabil said.

In a statement released on March 24, officials wrote, “For our neediest students, we have eliminated or sharply reduced loan burdens, and typical aid packages will be competitive with our wealthier counterparts. ... While there are no immediate plans to announce across-the-board enhancements to its financial aid program, the College guarantees—as it has in the past—that no qualified applicant will be denied a Barnard education solely because of her inability to pay.”

In 2006, Barnard stopped certifying private loans, which tend to have high rates of interest, without ensuring that families know the terms of the loan, the financial risks involved, and alternatives.

Barnard students commonly rely on government-guaranteed parent loans—flexible, long-term payment plans for a portion of tuition.

But despite significant efforts from administrators, complaints remained.

“It [financial aid] is completely inaccessible,” Marilla Li, BC ’10, said. “I know a lot of people on it, and they feel that financial aid is inadequate. But on the whole, Barnard has been pretty good in terms of providing resources.”

The proliferation of unpaid internships has been a challenge for students who struggle to pay tuition.

“Working at Barnard, it seems to me that the prominence of internships has grown exponentially, and it’s a financial aid challenge if more and more of these internships are unpaid and they are ‘credentialing’ our students for future employment,” said Suzy Stein, associate dean in Barnard’s Office of Career Development. “Students are taking these internships instead of working during the summer to save money for the fall.”

According to Stein, two thirds of the internships that appear in the college’s database are unpaid. Barnard offers alumnae-funded grants to students who take on unpaid internships.
“We want them to apply for what they are interested in and not just what pays well,” Stein said. Still, once students graduate, it can be a challenge to pursue their interests in the face of loan burdens.

“Students at Barnard may have to borrow a bit more than students would at Columbia,” Rabil said, “But it’s not going to hamper them. We are trying to make sure we use our resources in a way that supports our neediest students.”

Students also question how smaller financial aid packages affect the ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of the Barnard population.

“I get everything paid because of my financial situation,” said Carmen Rodriguez, BC ’08 and a Higher Education Opportunity Program grant recipient. “But I know a lot of students whose parents make $40,000, but they still have to pay to be here, which is unfair. I don’t want to say that just because you are a minority, you automatically make under $60,000, but being part of the Hispanic community, we need extra help to be part of these Ivy League institutions.”

The administration is also considering what a recession would mean for Barnard students and their families.

“It’s tougher and tougher on all levels for some of the middle-income students who are trying to figure out how to pay for college and who sometimes have families with multiple children,” Rabil said. “We try to project our financial aid budget on what students are going to need. If more students are applying with unemployed families or whose families have lost money in the stock market, we will try to accommodate them. We take our chances because we are need-blind.”

“Just knowing that the school will pay for you to go there helps you work harder to be here,” Rodriguez said. “I hope that the types of changes that have happened at Columbia can be something that Barnard can do in the next few years.”

samantha.saly@columbiaspectator.com