A tough year in the stock market and the strain of a national emergency may lead more prospective and current students to apply for aid, but Dartmouth remains committed to fulfilling need, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg.
"Financial aid is there to support students in good economic times and bad economic times," Furstenberg said, explaining that it is the College's responsibility to support students whose family's financial situations may worsen.
While the market had already begun to falter by last Winter's application deadline, Furstenberg said figures for last year's class bear little impact. At 49 percent, the proportion of Dartmouth freshmen on financial aid is up only slightly from the 47 percent of last year's class.
Greater problems may arise this year, as returns for the fiscal year 2001 come into play.
Dartmouth itself has seen some effects of this -- the College's endowment reported a return of "0.4 percent for the year leading to June 30, 2001. This follows last year's stellar 47 percent return.
"The endowment is definitely decreasing in value ... it's not been a good year in the stock market," Furstenberg said.
Of the approximately $30 million spent annually on scholarships, Dartmouth generally aims to obtain half of that from the endowment, and the other half from unrestricted funds in the general budget.
For those years in which the endowment falters and is unable to provide so large a portion, additional dollars must come from the general budget, Furstenberg explained.
If the College does need to allocate less money from the endowment to financial aid this year, the greater dependence on unrestricted money would result in a tightening of the College's expenditures in other areas. The responsibility of determining which programs would feel the effects of this falls to Dartmouth's treasurer when the College's budget is balanced.
Officials at Princeton and Yale universities similarly plan to ride out recent downturns in the stock market.
"It's probably a little early to predict" changes in aid applications, Yale Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Richard Shaw said. Shaw asserted that Yale will not limit its aid through periods of national economic struggle.
For Princeton, the potential increase in aid applicants comes less than a year after the university pledged to eliminate loans in favor of grant packages.
"It's a long-term thing and we're willing to stay with it," Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid Don Betterton said of the new plan, adding, "A year or two from now we expect [the aid applicant figures] to normalize."
