Access and Affordability

[johnwesley]

<p>College access and affordability, long been topics of conversation, have taken on added urgency in the wake of the worldwide economic downturn. Residential liberal arts colleges in particular have been feeling the heat, as witnessed by an April conference held at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and attended by officials from Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Macalester, Colorado College, Smith and many others:</p>

<p>[Second</a> Day of Liberal Arts Conference Explores Issues Facing Higher Education About Lafayette College](<a href=“http://www.lafayette.edu/about/news/2012/04/10/second-day-of-liberal-arts-conference-explores-issues-facing-higher-education/]Second”>http://www.lafayette.edu/about/news/2012/04/10/second-day-of-liberal-arts-conference-explores-issues-facing-higher-education/) </p>

<p>On the eve of a long-awaited capital campaign, Wesleyan has also been spending a lot of time looking at long-range budget projections, spending priorities and endowment performance. There is a lot talk lately about the efficacy of getting one’s degree in three years:</p>

<p>[Michael</a> Roth: Why Colleges Should Offer a Three-Year Option](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Why Colleges Should Offer a Three-Year Option | HuffPost College)</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>Details are slowly emerging. Apparently, with two AP credits and a couple of summer sessions (at Wesleyan), a student can graduate with the same number of credits AND without piling on a lot of extra classes during the year:
[Connecticut’s</a> Wesleyan University to promote 3-year college degree program- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut](<a href=“http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2012/05/25/news/doc4fbf73390aed4498729130.txt]Connecticut’s”>http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2012/05/25/news/doc4fbf73390aed4498729130.txt)</p>

[_z]

<p>Err, there are other kinds of details “slowly emerging,” too:</p>

<p>[Today:</a> Trustees Debate End to Need-Blind Admissions – Wesleying](<a href=“http://wesleying.org/2012/05/25/today-trustees-debate-end-to-need-blind-admissions/]Today:”>http://wesleying.org/2012/05/25/today-trustees-debate-end-to-need-blind-admissions/)</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>^^tru dat. I was talking with some alum at Usdan this afternoon and the way it has been explained to them is that there is a concern that more a more targeted approach toward the middle-class (middle-class being defined as a family making ~150k a year) is necessary if Wesleyan is really to achieve a diverse campus. From what I understand, something like three-quarters of its FA now goes to students with very high need and it has been that way for the past thirty years. </p>

<p>Short of instituting out-and-out merit awards (which many mid-western universities and LACs have), the only other alternative until Wes gets more money, is to specifically identify who is middle-class in the applicant pool - in essence, being need-aware - at some point in the admissions process. FWIW, the proposal as currently rumored, would keep 80-90% of the acceptances need-blind.</p>

[chrisrb]

<p>Two questions:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Our daughter will be matriculating at Wes in September 2012, with considerable financial aid, without which she might well be unable to attend Wesleyan. How, specifically, would her financial aid awards likely be affected by these budgetary policy changes at Wes over the next four years?</p></li>
<li><p>For those students applying to Wes in the near future, how are these changes likely to affect admissions decisions?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Can you elaborate, JohnWesley?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

[smartalic34]

<p>1) There should be no changes to your daughter’s financial aid, in theory. This change in policy is geared towards admission only. Students that are admitted (and current students) will still see their full need met. Some might argue that this policy change represents a decrease in financial aid spending overall, but the way they are going about it, they are going to adjust who is admitted so that those who DO need aid (and have been admitted/are attending) receive a full package.</p>

<p>2) The rumors have stated that Wesleyan will still be need-blind for 85-90% of the class, so it should only affect 10-15% of admission decisions. That’s what’s being tossed around right now. No policy changes have been officially announced.</p>

[dcsmiss]

<p>^ To echo smartalic34.
Admissions told me that while they would not be need-blind for me, that 100% of my demonstrated need would still be met if accepted.
I believe this would remain unchanged moving forward, and upon your daughter’s matriculation, 100% of her demonstrated need will be met for all four years.</p>

[smartalic34]

<p>dcsmiss - are you a transfer to Amherst? </p>

<p>Wesleyan has been, until this year, need-blind for all U.S. first-year applicants, but, as I think you are alluding to, has been need-aware for internationals and transfers for the past few years (like Middlebury and Bowdoin I believe). Now it seems Wes will become more like Tufts and Smith in its policies.</p>

[dcsmiss]

<p>smartalic34 - Yes, I am a transfer student. I applied to half a dozen schools
Wesleyan did accept despite the lack of financial disclosure on my part (Me being lazy), so I think that while Wesleyan may switch to “need-aware”, it should not impact anyone but the most “borderline” prospective students. As such, I would contend that perhaps it is near negligible for most applicants considering Wesleyan. Prospective applicants only worry should be that this new policy is indicative of financial pressures that may result in dearth of funding for other activities.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>

2. For those students applying to Wes in the near future, how are these changes likely to affect admissions decisions?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>If I understand the process correctly, the admissions office will have some sort of mechanism for knowing once they they’ve neared the cap for FA - probably near the end of the admissions cycle - at which point they will choose the remainder of the class, using socio-economic factors as an imput.</p>

<p>Let’s be conservative and estimate ~10% of the FA budget will be set aside for this purpose. That’s $1 million available for serious cherry-picking among different income groups, enough money, for example, roughly 20 students with -0- EFC ($1000000/$50000), or for what would be far more likely - 40 students with EFCs of ~$25,000. Even if the goal is only to match the EFC for some of the most competitive state flagship universities (some of which are quite pricey at $35k a year) that’s 66 additional “middle-class” students who might not otherwise have been identified as such.</p>

<p>All of this is purely speculative, of course, since the trustees have been strangely silent since they met last Friday, but here are some of the things i am concerned with:</p>

<p>1) How does this impact URMs since they obviously comprise a significant number of the students who come within the “high-need” category?</p>

<p>2) Will the lower-need students be competing with the balance of the entire applicant pool or just with each other? </p>

<p>3) How confident can we be that the adcom can actually manage yields for so many different constituencies (first, it was athletes, then it was URMs, now it’s middle-class students?) and,</p>

<p>4) The usual tranparency issues, for example, how do we know the extra $1 million will actually get spent rather than just pocketed by the university as a savings (on top of the savings they will already be receiving by establishing a cap in the first place?)</p>

[chrisrb]

<p>I imagine fewer students will apply, at least those at the lower end of the economic scale, that this will then hurt diversity, that all this will negatively impact rankings, and that lower rankings could negatively affect fundraising, which seems to defeat the purpose of the switch to need-aware in the first place </p>

<p>… to say nothing of how “un-Wesleyan” ALL of this is on the face of it!</p>

<p>By how much might application numbers, rankings, etc. be affected? Hard to say, obviously, but educated speculation would be interesting to consider.</p>

[chrisrb]

<p>I know President Roth is well aware that leadership is best shown by clear and unequviocal personal example.</p>

<p>Earlier today, I read a pretty interesting idea on a Wesleyan blog (Wesleying?) in which one reader suggested that, given the current crisis facing his (and our) beloved Wesleyan, President Roth set the example by lowering his salary to $1 for a year or two, since so many of his family’s expenses are paid by the university in addition to his salary anyway, and the man is no pauper to begin with.</p>

<p>[Worth noting is that President Roth’s salary of approx. $300K per year is already substantially below average].</p>

<p>To me, this would be a great thing for Wesleyan’s president to do at this critical time. Imagine the effect such an act could have on fundraising efforts and student pride: </p>

<p>“President Roth gave up his salary for a year [to save Wesleyan as we’ve always known it]. What can you contribute?”</p>

<p>“OUR president gave up his salary for us. What has YOUR college president done for YOU lately?”</p>

<p>Given the unsustainability of college costs that Dr. Roth has been so outspoken about lately, it seems this kind of dramatic personal sacrifice by the head of the university would truly set an amazing example for other American colleges to follow. </p>

<p>Rather than axing so much of what makes Wesleyan Wesleyan, by forgoing his salary for a year or two Dr. Roth would be making indelibly clear those factors that have always distinguished Wesleyan University from its peers: dedicated service to others, bold and daring moral and ethical stands, contribution toward the common good; the notion that one committed individual can – through principled, committed, serious self-sacrifice and direct action – light a fire of inspiration and energy sufficient to create miraculous positive change within institutions and societies; giving till it hurts (till it really hurts, if necessary) rather than giving up who we are.</p>

<p>It’s all too easy for me to suggest that another man should give up his salary, of course!</p>

<p>But I think Dr. Roth may actually have the cohones, strength of character, sense of duty, and love of his university to do such a thing.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>Well, it’s official. The announcement we’ve ben expecting appeared on President Roth’s website this morning. The salient information includes the following:</p>

<p>1) Thus far this year we’ve accepted fewer than 20% of the students who applied for admissiion. </p>

<p>2) Our total student charges will increase by 4.5% next year, reaching $58,000, which provides about 74% of the revenue it takes to run Wesleyan. </p>

<p>3) We will be allocating about $50 million to scholarships in 2012-2013 - a 15% increase.</p>

<p>Regarding need-blind admissions, specifically, he made the following statement:

We remain committed to meeting the full financial need of the students we enroll, and to do so without increasing required student indebtedness. This may mean that we will have to consider the capacity of some students to pay, as we do now with transfer and international students. We will read all applications without regard for the ability to pay, and we will be need-blind for as many students as possible. Currently we project this to be about 90% of each class (depending on the level of need).

</p>

<p><a href=“Sustainable Affordability – Roth on Wesleyan”>Sustainable Affordability – Roth on Wesleyan;

[dcsmiss]

<p>Does anyone know if Wesleyan includes loans as part of the financial aid award?</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>^^It does. Your family income has to be <$40,000 a year to qualify for -0- loan FA.</p>

[chrisrb]

<p>Twice in recent decades this was tried and beaten back by student protests against the abandonment of need-blind status by the Wesleyan administration.</p>

<p>I wonder if this is why this was all such a surprise, this time. Seems clear the administration tried hard to keep the cat in the bag as long as possible, probably to prevent input from students/alums that would almost certainly be highly negative.</p>

<p>As I read somewhere else, they could have first sent out a letter to the alums saying “if we don’t raise X dollars by Y date, we’ll need to go to a need-aware admissions policy.”</p>

[smartalic34]

<p>

they could have first sent out a letter to the alums saying “if we don’t raise X dollars by Y date, we’ll need to go to a need-aware admissions policy.”

Makes you wonder. The only reason I can think of is so they can say during the upcoming capital campaign, “Donate to restore need-blind admissions!” thereby boosting the campaign. Faulty logic, but the only thing I can think of.</p>

[dcsmiss]

<p>They must have come to the conclusion that the campaign would yield inadequate funding to maintain need-blind admissions.
I’m sure it came down to maintaining current student services or cutting need-blind. Ultimately, it may be that they made the better choice to maintain Wesleyan’s academic value.</p>

[smartalic34]

<p>The campaign may indeed yield enough funds to secure need-blind. The draw on the endowment is based on the previous 3 years’ average so by the time the campaign concludes, probably no earlier than 2015, it would take even more time for the money to show itself in the endowment draw. That’s at least 6 years away, so who knows.</p>

[johnwesley]

<p>dcsmiss wrote:

They must have come to the conclusion that the campaign would yield inadequate funding to maintain need-blind admissions.

</p>

<p>SM34 wrote:

That’s at least 6 years away, so who knows.

SM34 is right. Six years of red ink is a lot of money, and big donors want to know one thing: that their contribution will actually count for something. This is especially true since the whole effort is being touted as a campaign for endowment; no one’s name is going to be chiseled in stone above a building when it’s all over. For that reason, people, especially the sorts of people most likely to make substantial donations (bankers, management consultants, corporate CEOs), are even more concerned that their money won’t be tossed down a sinkhole. Think, Germany as it sets austerity conditions on fellow Eurozone members before allowing them to reorganize their debt. They want to know that the university has cut non-essential frills; they want to know that the administration is lean. In short, they want to know that the financial situation is under control BEFORE they sign the check, not after.</p>

<p>What should <em>really</em>be of concern is another downturn in the economy. If that happens, look for more top schools to follow Wesleyan’s example.</p>