To the Editors:
Harvard is again in the limelight (The Dartmouth, March 3). Its new financial aid policy promises that families earning under $40,000 a year won't have to pay for their children's undergraduate education. Harvard should be lauded for this bold move, but attention should also be paid to alarming national trends. Though Harvard's new financial aid plan will assist its neediest students, most economically disadvantaged students are not going to Harvard, much less any other Ivy League school.
Pell Grants are the federal program to help middle and low-income families pay for college tuition, room and board. They are a good measure of a school's success in incorporating students who are economically disadvantaged, because they are allocated based on family income and the cost of college attendance.
Although Pell Grants are supposed to be the foundation of student aid packages, the purchasing power of the average grant has plummeted. According to a College Board study, two decades ago, a Pell Grant covered 84 percent of the average costs at a four-year public university. By 2002, a Pell Grant met only 42 percent.
The percent of students receiving Pell Grants says a good deal about a university's outreach to the disadvantaged. In 2001, 22.6 percent of students nationwide paid for college with a Pell Grant, according to the Education Department. In the Ivy League, 17.2 percent of Columbia's students got Pell Grants, followed by Cornell University (16.5 percent), the University of Pennsylvania (12.3 percent), Dartmouth (11.1 percent) and so forth.
In contrast to Harvard's pioneering aid policy, the Bush budget for 2005 is apt to result in further Pell Grant cuts. One budget provision would stop the program from getting more money from the general budget to cover the grants when more students than budgeted apply. Next year's shortfall is estimated at $3.7 billion. Apparently, "No Child Left Behind" is not a philosophy that extends to college students, whose schools will have to dig deeper into their own funds or resign themselves to fewer students from middle and lower-class families.
