Stanford, Pomona, Yale and more than two dozen of the nation's other leading private colleges and universities announced Friday that they are adopting new guidelines to ensure that financial aid decisions are based primarily on need.
The new principles are an effort to counter a growing tendency by such schools to use financial aid to attract top students, athletes and underrepresented minorities, regardless of the students' actual need. The trend has gradually reduced funds available for the neediest students, university officials said.
FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Tuesday July 10, 2001 Home Edition Part A Part A Page 2 A2 Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
College aid--A Saturday story about changes in financial aid guidelines for a number of private colleges and universities misstated Cornell University's annual financial aid budget. It is $78 million.
Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings III, who led the effort, said the guidelines should result in larger scholarships for many students, with individual increases ranging from a few hundred dollars to $1,500 per year.
Rawlings said the effort was aimed at creating consistency from college to college and reducing widespread confusion among students and their parents over complicated financial aid formulas.
"The whole area of financial aid has become so complex and variable that families were having an exceedingly difficult time understanding it," he said. "We've tried to create clarity and consistency in our approach."
The 28 colleges and universities that committed to the new policy are among the nation's most selective, and expensive, private institutions. All admit their students without considering their ability to pay--known as need-blind admissions--and offer financial aid to allow them to attend.
The annual cost of attending many of the schools is more than $30,000, with Stanford fairly typical in charging about $35,000 a year for tuition, room and board.
But increasingly, in a process that began in the 1980s and has intensified in recent years, colleges have competed to offer hefty scholarships to the students they most want to attract, including talented athletes and top high school graduates, rather than those most in need.
The practice, known as merit aid, has made it more and more difficult for students from low- and even middle-income backgrounds to gain access to some of the nation's most selective schools, said Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro, one of the 28 signatories.
"There has been an increasing stratification in higher education, with rich schools getting richer and the merit-aid wars accelerating," said Schapiro, a higher education economist and expert in financial aid. "This will lower the price for the students who are most needy. It's a big step forward."
