College endowments keep growing at the rate of 17% - 30% a year while tuition continues to increase. This has angered Congress. Many elite colleges with large endowments of over $1 billion have responded by increasing their financial aid offerings to include more grants and less loans. Yale recently said undergraduates whose families earn between $60,000 and $120,000 will typically pay between 1% and 10% of their income to attend. Dartmouth College announced that it would eliminate tuition for students from families with income less than $75,000, a rather small concession when compared to other recently announced grant increases. Will these changes satisfy Congress? Private foundations are required by law to spend 5% minimum annual payout whereas colleges are typically spending a little over 4%. Congress wants these colleges to reduce their hoarding and to spend a least 5% of their endowments to assist current students.
For some families these grant increases will make elite schools more affordable. They will cost less then many public colleges and almost all privates. The results will be more qualified applicants added to an already very talented pool. Princeton rejects more than 90 per cent of their applicants, Stanford 89.7%. Harvard turned down 1,100 students who scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT while Yale reported rejecting several students who scored a 2400 on the SAT.
Homer Sweeney
No comments:
Post a Comment