Playing Catch-Up

In mid-December, Harvard announced a major expansion of its financial-aid policy that will offer unprecedented tuition relief to families in several income brackets. Though Yale has outlined equally bold plans and a host of other schools have unveiled reforms of their own, Columbia has not followed suit. University President Lee Bollinger has said that the University cannot afford to expand its financial offerings at present. That may be true, but it is high time for the administration to articulate how it intends to reform financial aid.

Although Columbia’s current $4-billion capital campaign is setting aside $440 million for financial aid, the University—with an endowment one-fifth the size of Harvard’s—lacks the financial resources to match the policies announced by Harvard and Yale. But the University of Pennsylvania, whose endowment is comparable to that of Columbia, has demonstrated that there are viable options for reform. Columbia and Penn’s current grants-for-loans policies, which substitute outright grants for government loans, affect all students from families making less than $50,000 per year. Over the winter break, however, Penn announced that it would extend this policy to all students on financial aid by fall 2009. Even if Columbia cannot yet afford to do the same, the University must place renewed emphasis on financial aid in the years ahead.

Any future reforms should also encompass international students and students from the School of General Studies, who have long been sidelined under the University’s financial-aid policies. The admission of international undergraduates is not need-blind, and General Studies offers merit scholarships but no need-based financial aid. Reforms in the fall of 2006 showed no signs of remedying these inequities, insofar as the grants-for-loans program they created excluded international and General Studies students. Moreover, the administration has still not explicitly promised to spend funds from the capital campaign on international and General Studies students. Its limited means notwithstanding, the University should commit to focusing future reforms on students who are currently marginalized.

The money is out there. In April 2007, John Kluge, CC ’37, bequeathed $400 million to the University for financial aid, with $200 million earmarked specifically for Columbia College. Such donations are the cornerstone of financial-aid expansion, and other alumni can be convinced that financial aid is a cause worthy of their support. To inspire alumni to more actively support their alma mater, however, the University must demonstrate a serious and lasting commitment to reforming financial aid.