A recent study by the Lumina Foundation for Education called Dartmouth "unaffordable" while asserting that a vast majority of U.S. colleges do not provide enough aid to students. A senior Dartmouth financial aid official objected strenuously to this categorization of the College's financial aid policy.
The Foundation's study, "Unequal Opportunity," examined tuition and other costs, as well as financial aid packages, at over 2,800 colleges around the United States.
Affordability rankings are broken down by income level and economic independence. A typical "dependent" student is young and gets help from parents paying for higher education, while an "independent" student is likely to be older and self-sufficient.
The nearby College for Lifelong Learning is listed as affordable for dependent median-income students, affordable with borrowing for both dependent low-income and independent median-income students, and unaffordable for independent, low-income students.
The study lists Dartmouth itself as unaffordable for all four categories of students.
According to Financial Aid Director Virginia Hazen, Dartmouth provides aid to 39 percent of its student body. Including federal contributions, these students receive an average of $19,000 in aid. "We meet the full need," she said.
For the 1999-2000 academic year, the College awarded more than $29 million in scholarship assistance, according to the Financial Aid Office.
The Lumina study calculated whether students could afford college without serious financial sacrifices by adding average effective family contribution -- or EFC -- to "the average aid available to them," and comparing the sum to the cost of the institution.
Hazen objected to the results of the study on several grounds. First, the study does not use the same EFC calculation that Dartmouth and the federal government do -- Lumina did not consider any factors other than income.
The report also assumed that all recipients of federal aid were low-income students. Hazen told The Dartmouth that most of the aid-receiving population at the College get federal help, including some high-income students.
According to Hazen, the report also assumed that most students came from a college's home state, which would never be true for a highly selective school like Dartmouth.
Finally, Hazen said that because Dartmouth aid is need-based, needy students would receive much more than the average Dartmouth grant, which the study used to calculate affordability.
Hazen went on to say that the College had replaced more of its loans and work-study with grants in recent years. Additional Federal Stafford and low-interest Federal Perkins Loans are available to needy students.
