Ivy Aid '98

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, October 7, 1998

It is February, and Princeton, with all the nauseating earnestness of the falsely magnamonious, is announcing a new financial aid plan. The new Princeton will be a school for the working-class, they say. It will be as accessible as Rutgers, they say. Is Princeton trying to get a leg up on the rest of the Ivy League? Oh no, they say, just following through on our own heritage of academic excellence and institutional generosity.

It is October, and Karl Furstenberg is on spin control. The increases in Princeton's financial aid are not terribly significant, he says. There is only a statistically small number of applicants who make their college choice based on the financial aid packages they receive, he says. So Dartmouth is content to sit idly by while the rest of the Ivy League ups the financial ante? He grins. He wouldn't say that.

When I called Karl Furstenberg for an interview last week, to accompany The Dartmouth Review's issue on financial aid, he twice put me off, saying that if I waited until the middle of the week he'd have something important to tell me. So I waited, met with him in the middle of the week, and was told that Dartmouth was putting together a financial aid package that (Karl Furstenberg believes) will be competitive with Princeton's, Yale's, Harvard's, and Stanford's.

Karl Furstenberg outlined the preliminary details of the new plan for me (see pages 6-7). There are three main changes that Princeton made in its plan last February, and when Harvard, Yale, and Stanford reworked their financial aid plans in response to Princeton, they made very similar changes. The three changes: Princeton converted much of the aid it gave in loans to aid given in grants.

Princeton will no longer count outside scholarships against applicants when deciding the amount of their student loans. Princeton will take a much more generous view of 'family assets' in deciding how much financial aid to give out. (Princeton will no longer consider the value of an applicant's family's home an 'asset,' for example).

Karl Furstenberg says Dartmouth will match each of the first two changes — converting loans into grants and exempting outside scholarships — and will come close to Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and Yale on the last point, the evaluation of family assets. Still, it seems that Furstenberg is right: the new financial aid package will be competitive.

All of which is very good. Furstenberg is right: kids don't pick colleges on whether they give a few more dollars in financial aid, they pick colleges because of their reputations and prestige. Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford have changed their financial aid packages, and if Dartmouth wants to be considered with these schools Dartmouth should change it's financial aid package too.

Which is not to say that Dartmouth should become the Big Green lemming of the Ivy League, blindly thrashing with only Harvard's (or Princeton's, or Yale's) policy as a guide. But upgrading financial aid packages to make it easier for talented students of limited means to come to schools like Dartmouth is an undeniably good idea.

It is good for the students, it is good for Dartmouth, it is even good for society.

The only rational objection to the new financial policy is that Dartmouth might not be able to afford it.

Princeton and Harvard, after all, have over three times the endowment per student that Dartmouth has, and the bills for increased financial aid will mostly be paid by the endowment. (Even with its massive endowment, Princeton claimed it needed a special fundraising drive before it could safely afford the new financial aid package).

Karl Furstenberg has some sensible responses to this. First, he has some understanding of Princeton's financial structure and thinks the thought that they needed the special fundraising drive was hype and hype alone — it was much more than covered by the endowment.

Second, financial aid is an area that is particularly attractive to alumni donation. In the College's last capital drive, financial aid drew more money than any other area. Third, Dartmouth will not spend more than it can in the long-term. It will not guarentee the same lenient address of family assets that Princeton and Harvard do, because that extra step might prove too costly. Such restraint is the mark of sensible policy.

The new financial aid package, as it stands in its preliminary stages, is a very good idea. The structure and timing of the package make it clear that Dartmouth is not just following the herd, that there has been and will continue to be a sensible assessment of what is best and affordable for Dartmouth College.

Karl Furstenberg told me that he expects to have the package finalized and ready for announcement by the end of the month. If the plan goes through as he outlined it, it will be a vary good thing for Dartmouth.

Ivy Aid '98

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