<p>Hi Gang–</p>
<p>There are so many issues going on in this thread. Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up with you all. The last several weeks of April are always pretty crazy in our office, as I’m sure you can understand. </p>
<p>As for the “left wing” component of UR’s student body, I’d encourage your daughter to join the Class of 2012 Facebook group. They have a couple of threads going on talking about politics and I assure you the liberal thread is quite lively. There are plenty of liberals around UR although that seems to conflict with what most people want to believe about the place. Your left-wing daughter will be able to find a niche, I’m sure. </p>
<p>As for your concern about what will happen to your daughter’s aid in subsequent years, I will promise you that your eligibility will continue to be met with the same awarding policy that we used for her this year (we’ll meet 100% of your eligibility with mostly grant money, capping her self-help (work study and student loans) at $4,000/year. Scholarships she brings in from other sources would reduce her loans rather than her grants, so it is worth her trouble to continue to seek outside scholarships as it reduces her total indebtedness. But you should remember that your eligibility can change and so the total amount of aid can change too. For most families, the financial situation stays considerably the same over the four years, and so does the aid award. I would invite you to get to know the staff in the financial aid office. There are not many places where you’d get the same level of personal contact as you will at UR and becoming known to the aid folks can be very helpful as you work your way through the next several years. </p>
<p>I agree with your summary comment that much of the frustration that is coming out in this thread is related to the stress that parents are feeling about the cost of college generally especially in a poor economy. Richmond is expensive–but so are most of our competitors. I had a graduate intern actually make me a spreadsheet over the last several weeks of the charges of major private universities. Yes, Richmond has high tuition, but we have room and board that is considerably lower than most and we have no mandatory fees. Our finance folks have chosen to bundle it all into the tuition charge and not to nickel/dime you on your bill. This obviously has a vicious downside in that our cost is more transparent than many. </p>
<p>I would also say that we’ve heard you loud and clear on feeling mislead about our aid programs. “Affordable” is a very relative term. We’re totally honest about the basis of our need-based aid program–it is true that we meet 100%of demonstrated eligibility. The challenge for so many families is that the determination of eligibility works against them. But our materials for prospects even go so far as to recommend visiting a financial aid EFC calculator to get an idea of what your EFC will be–this is not the practice of a place that is trying to hide. But this formula is based on a pretty old-fashioned cost of living and most of us don’t live that way these days, do we? We have multiple cell phones and computers, plasma screen TVs and ipods, more cars in our driveways than licensed drivers, many more square feet of living space than the homes in which we grew up, walk-in closets that seem to invite us to fill them up with much more clothing than we’d have collected when our closets were smaller, children who’ve never experienced a shared bed-room with a sibling, bigger utility bills to heat these larger homes, soaking tubs and the water bills to match, granite countertops and much more (of course this is not every family, but I hope you get the point–our quality of life has escalated along with the cost of college). I’m not trying to criticize these choices because I’ve made some of them too. </p>
<p>As for our merit program, we’ve chosen to create this program differently than many of our peers and that is our choice to make. We will be bringing in a new VP for enrollment management this summer (a new position at UR–Admissions and FA have traditionally reported through the Provost) and I expect that there will be some changes in our strategy regarding merit aid. No matter how you create programs like need-based aid and merit-based aid, there will always be winners and losers. You can change the program to soften the criticisms of those on the losing end, but it just creates a different group who end up in the same place–unhappy. Richmond has chosen a principled route in terms staying away from gapping and leveraging based on cynical and sometimes unethical business models. Most people agree with our approach in principle until it leaves their student on the wrong side of the fence. </p>
<p>I too am hopeful that in the new administration we’ll have leadership that aspires to address these issues in a positive way and I’m sorry that it won’t benefit the students who will have chosen another institution because of this issue this year. I would also say that I’m a firm believer that no single institution is the absolute, 100% right place for any student. While I know there is no parent out there that wouldn’t want to make possible their education at the school of their child’s dreams once they’ve been admitted, I would also say that there are many times in life we don’t get the object of our dreams and most of us still turn out OK. Our aid programs are most generous to those families for whom our aid is the difference between their child attending college at all and attending UR. I think that the loudest voices here will no doubt find a way for their children to access higher education and that does put them in a position of privilege whether or not they choose to acknowledge it. </p>
<p>I know that Whistle Pig thinks Richmond isn’t worth the money, and every individual is welcome to their assessment. But the jibe about no Rhodes scholars in sight is pretty small. We did have a Rhodes about 2 years ago–I believe he’s about to finish at Oxford any time now, and we consistenly have students who receive Marshall, Goldwater, Fulbright, Clare Booth Luce scholarships and many other prestigious national awards. They are consistently admitted to the nation’s finest graduate and professional programs. Where Richmond has fallen short (in my opinion) is in that it did not have an institutional research position until about 5 years ago, so we do not have a strong history of tracking our graduates and therefore our outcome statistics look weak, when it is a result of lack of follow up on our part, not lack of achievement on the part of our graduates. In addition, we’ve under-invested in communications infrastructure, (i.e.we were very slow to adopt a fully functioning web development staff among other things) and as a result, our reputation significantly lags the quality of our product. </p>
<p>I will also say that from a historical perspective, Richmond is still learning to think like an elite institution. As strong as the programs and the finances are today, we are very new to this peer group and perhaps it is part of why we’ve been more conservative in our approach to the use of our endowment. In the late 60’s Richmond was on the verge of financial collapse and considering selling its facilities to the state and shutting its doors. It was through the vision of incredibly generous donors (most notably E. Claiborne Robins who gave the University a gift of $50 million dollars in 1969, at that time the largest gift from a private individual to an institution of higher education) that UR has become what it is today. But we’ve always had very conservative financial management, perhaps because of the memory of our near demise. In addition, for many years, our development office did a great deal to maintain its relationships with major donors but did not sufficiently create a larger culture of consistent philanthropy that might embolden our spending policies. </p>
<p>This is surely enough for one night’s posting! I hope that it gives you some context for how it is looking on our end. I wish all of you (or your children as the case may be) have made deposits at places that will help them realize their potential. And I’m sure we’ll continue this conversation!</p>
<p>UR Admissions</p>