Endowment and Funding

cavalier302
Thu, 27 Jan 2005 23:14:29 +0000

Georgetown does face problems do to its meager endowment. Have any of you ever checked out Georgetown’s financial aid information? Their average grant portion of a financial aid package is only around $15-16K…pretty weak! I’ve heard gripes about other cuts that they’ve made, but I’m not aware of too many specifics. An endowment of $850million for a university of Georgetown’s size and prestige is miniscule, especially when compared to those of schools like Rice and Williams, which are significantly smaller and significantly richer per capita. As a point of comparison, Phillips Academy Andover has an endowment of $570millions…for just over 1,000 students…and it’s a high school! Plus, being the ritzy place that it is, Andover probably has fewer financial aidees, thus further lowering potential expenditures putting more endowment funds into the education of its students. Just my two cents: Georgetown needs to raise some major cash (~$2billion) if it wants to continue to compete as an academically elite institution. The deleterious effect of such limited resources surely has a negative effect on “diversity” and getting top students; students accepted from solid middle class backgrounds who get into Georgetown will also gain acceptances from other top schools, and, with those acceptances, superior financial aid packages. I am one of those middle class kids, and I applied to Georgetown because I love the school and with the hope that I may get lucky with financial aid (if accepted). So, let’s say I am accapted, but cannot go due to financial aid. I am then a “casualty” of the weak financial aid situation, and, implicitly, the small endowment. Georgetown would then lose out on a student they wanted and the small bit of socioeconomic diversity that I would bring. A school full of top-income kids who can pay the high asking price is one that would, in my opinion, slowly decay. No elite school can make it difficult for 95% of the population to attend.