Vocaboly.com

[Ray Woodcock]

[Excerpt from New York Times]


As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, New Efforts to Level the Field

April 22, 2004 By DAVID LEONHARDT

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - At prestigious universities around the country,
from flagship state colleges to the Ivy League, more and more students
from upper-income families are edging out those from the middle class,
according to university data.

The change is fast becoming one of the biggest issues in higher
education.

More members of this year's freshman class at the University of
Michigan have parents making at least $200,000 a year than have
parents making less than the national median of about $53,000,
according to a survey of Michigan students. At the most selective
private universities across the country, more fathers of freshmen are
doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers or
members of the military - combined.

Experts say the change in the student population is a result of both
steep tuition increases and the phenomenal efforts many wealthy
parents put into preparing their children to apply to the best
schools. ...

Some colleges are starting to take action. Officials long accustomed
to discussing racial diversity are instead taking steps to improve
economic diversity. They say they are worried that their universities
are reproducing social advantage instead of serving as an engine of
mobility.

"It's very much an issue of fundamental fairness," Lawrence H.
Summers, the president of Harvard, said in an interview. "An important
purpose of institutions like Harvard is to give everybody a shot at
the American dream."

The University of Maryland recently said it would no longer ask
students from families making less than $21,000 a year to take out
loans, and would instead give them scholarships to cover tuition.
Officials at Harvard, the University of North Carolina and the
University of Virginia all recently announced similar, even more
generous policies.

Stanford and Yale have altered early-admission programs, partly out of
a concern that they give an unfair advantage to students who do not
need to compare financial-aid offers before they can commit to a
college.

Over all, at the 42 most selective state universities, including the
flagship campuses in California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan and New
York, 40 percent of this year's freshmen come from families making
more than $100,000, up from about 32 percent in 1999, according to the
Higher Education Research Institute. Nationwide, fewer than 20 percent
of families make that much money.

The recent increase has continued a two-decade trend that extends well
beyond the best-known colleges.

In 2000, about 55 percent of freshmen at the nation's 250 most
selective colleges, public and private, were from the highest-earning
fourth of households, compared with 46 percent in 1985 ....

At Harvard, for instance, financial-aid forms suggest that the median
family income is about $150,000. ...

Colleges have meanwhile increased tuition rapidly, causing the number
of students on financial aid to jump and creating an impression that
they are from a wider economic spectrum than in the past. In reality,
financial aid simply stretches far higher up the income ladder than
before. ...

Michigan is still not dominated by wealth as some private colleges
are. Almost half of its students are from families earning less than
$100,000 a year, the student survey shows. But the changes are still
unmistakable, say professors and others here.

"When most people think of a typical college student, they're thinking
about eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and having massive
debts," said Scott E. Mendy, a junior from Tigard, Ore., who receives
financial aid. At Michigan, he said, "people live very well." ...

The advantages of campuses with increasingly wealthy student bodies
are obvious, educators say: the colleges have more resources for
research and student activities, more professors doing cutting-edge
work and more students who received solid high school educations.

But they also have much steeper tuition bills than in the past, and
this seems to have turned off many middle- and low-income families.
Some students are not willing to take on the tens of thousands of
dollars of debt that is often necessary. Others, studies show,
underestimate the available amount of financial aid.

"We were founded on the principle of allowing larger numbers of
students to go to college in an affordable way," Mr. Spencer,
Michigan's admission director, said. "But having said that, the price
of college has gone up, and many of the truly needy will not bother to
apply."

That concerns people here and on other campuses because of what it
could mean for the variety of campus life and for the broader economy.

"We're very worried," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's director of
undergraduate admissions. "There are some very, very talented kids in
the bottom quartile who aren't even going to college. It's a huge
waste of talent."