In the future, college students who hope to graduate without debt will do more than apply for scholarships or participate in work-study programs ““ they’ll also attend elite, Ivy League universities.
This seems counterintuitive to us. In the past, whenever someone uttered words like “Harvard” or “Stanford,” all I could hear was “expensive” or “life-long debt.”
But that association has dramatically changed in the past few months because of what has been described in the press as a “financial aid war” among highly ranked private universities to lower or even eliminate students’ tuition and living expenses.
Unlike most others, this war doesn’t seem to have any downsides, especially for students. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had its share of backlash. What could people possibly be complaining about?
A popular whine has been that colleges without multimillion-dollar endowments won’t be able to afford to compete for bright students from the middle class.
I’m sure most students, particularly those taking full course loads, drowning in debt, and working part-time jobs just to get by, feel a tremendous amount of sympathy. Imagine having your options limited by the amount of money you have. How awful.
The claim that these programs could hurt low-income students, however, is much more serious. An article in Newsweek wonders if many lower-tier universities will begin taking money away from low-income students and diverting it toward middle-class students in order to remain competitive.
The article fails to note that the bulk of federal and state aid is geared toward lower-income students. According to CalGrants.org, qualifying students can receive a Cal Grant worth as much as $9,700 per year ““ which never needs to be paid back.
Federal grants such as Pell Grants are also available only to lower-income students and can be worth several thousand dollars each.
So if some funds were to be diverted to middle-class students, the lower-income students would still have access to many different resources.
Additionally, Stanford totally eliminated living expenses and most tuition for lower-income families.
The goal is not to deprive the poor, but make college affordable for all students.
Perhaps the biggest contribution the financial aid wars are making to students’ lives is the gradual decrease in dependence on family contributions, which can place heavy burdens on families who may not be able to dedicate a substantial portion of their income toward hefty tuition or fee payments.
The one unfortunate and inevitable downside of this trend is the demise of public universities like UCLA, assuming the state funding continues to be laughably inadequate.
On UCLA’s Web site, the current estimated cost of attendance of one year is $23,980, and as any bitter Bruin can predict, it will only rise with each passing year.
One of the qualities that make UCLA so attractive is its price tag. Compared to most private universities, our student fees are nearly nonexistent.
But with tuition rising every year, and now a dramatic increase in aid at private schools, students who were persuaded to attend UCLA because of the financial savings will begin to go elsewhere.
Most private schools will eventually follow Harvard’s lead, though it may take them some time to scrape together the extra funds. When they do, however, our public universities will become second-class, as bright students flock to institutions that offer not only quality educations, but debt-free postgraduate lives.
These institutions will attract more of the brightest students, dominate the rankings, and in turn attract more accomplished faculty members.
By that time the people of California will probably have realized their mistakes ““ like gearing up to spend more on our prisons than on education ““ but it will take an enormous amount of time and effort to undo the damage.
I would like to say that the government will see this coming and act to stop it by increasing funding enough to ““ at the very least ““ hold our fees steady. But as nice as that sounds, it just doesn’t fit in with the priority of our current government.
At least we can take comfort in the fact that by the time that happens, we’ll be so far into our careers that the value of our diplomas will no longer matter.
Thinking of transferring to Stanford? E-mail Strickland at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.