Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1998/02/11/something_less_princeton_and_financial_aid.php
Wednesday, February 11, 1998
To consider the catalogue of songs Princeton alumni like to cheer from section 38C is to understand the totality of that school's obsession with its position. All of the chants reference Harvard or Yale; most lyrics concern both. The tone, too, is striking. Far from the mock condescension and playful spite which describe the attitude of Dartmouth alumni towards Harvard and Yale, Princeton adopts a tight reverence: it is not quite sure whether it belongs in the pantheon — it worries that it may not be quite as good as it wants.
Princeton's governors are in perpetual quagmire: they strive for intellectual viability and social supremacy, but they are locked forever in New Jersey. (A dreadful eight-hour train odyssey from New York last winter has left me with the indelible impression of Princeton — the town you have to go through Newark to get to). For a couple of centuries, Princeton had a ready identity — it was the school of the southern elite, much as Yale was the New York and Chicago school and Harvard the Boston school. The disintegration of such distinctions, however, which patterns elite university admissions over the last two decades, has left Princeton without even that calling card. Princeton might now satisfy itself with being not quite as good as MIT at sciences, or not quite as prestigious as Harvard, or not quite as good at throwing balls through hoops as Duke, but that seems unlikely. Instead, Princeton conjures up that old opiate of the panicky elite, tradition, and prays by Madison and Wilson that all will turn out well.
Princeton doesn't just have tradition, though, it also has traditional money, and the suddenly progressive minds of Princeton's bureaucratic bowels have just come up with a mechanism to put that to good use. Princeton University recently revealed a plan to cash in its current system of loan-based financial aid (which everyone else uses — even Harvard and Yale) for one structured on the grant.
The aim is simple. Pretensions of magnanimity aside (this is Princeton, after all), the governors hope to buy off enough supremely talented students to close the small (and it is, they assure themselves, small) gap between themselves and Harvard and Yale. If they can reinforce the prestige and quality of their undergraduate student body, the graduate programs might likely follow, and the University from nowhere might finally one-up Harvard. Might.
What Princeton's plan will certainly do, however, is panic its sister schools. The Ivy League is nothing if not competitive, and Princeton is leader enough to be followed. The added notion that Princeton now opens it's gates widest to the downtrodden should disrupt a few desktop lattés across collegial New England.
The necessary result is a race for endowment — the richest school will be able to attract the most prestigious undergraduate student body, and hence..will win. The Ivy League strives singularly for prestige among those who matter.
The final result, however, is a necessary bifurcation of the elite university system.
Janet Conant's recent Vanity Fair article is premised on a celebration of the beautiful people at Brown — the second generation celebrity set, roosting. Burdened by a tragically low endowment and minimal alumni involvement, Brown's former President Vartan Gregorian set about recruiting contemporary money from all the best boarding schools of Switzerland.
The result, Conant's survey inadvertently indicates, is a campus high on Kraftwerk and low on, well, substance. Brown has developed, in something less than a real city, something less than a real curriculum, and, if Conant's abstractions are to be believed (she celebrates this culture, remember) something less than real students.Brown can't offer the sort of financial aid packages Harvard and Princeton can. It simply doesn't have the money. It therefore compromises credibility in order to stay competitive.
Clearly Princeton may force the fundamentally competitive Ivy League into fundamental misstep. To force the prestige of a university with near exclusivity onto one variable — the ability to raise money — in an environment where importance is singularly placed on the prestige that variable governs is to ensure the failure of the system. Princeton and Harvard and Yale may thrive, but the rest of the Ivy League won't be able to keep up with these capital demands, will split into two, intellectually distinct, divisions.