The New York Times recently published an impressive piece about student loan debt. The amount of debt with which current college students are graduating is not only staggering, but it is burdensome to the point of nihilism. My heart goes out to them.
What is more interesting, however, are statistics that The Times compiled, which show how dear old Dartmouth compares to other private colleges and universities. Roughly 50 percent of Dartmouth students graduate bearing debt, with the average amount of debt per graduate amounting to $18,712. In comparison, approximately 15 percent of Princeton University students graduate with debt, and those who do only have to repay, on average, roughly $5,000. Would someone at Dartmouth's Financial Aid Office mind explaining to us why an education at Princeton leaves students with only a quarter of the debt that an education at Dartmouth does? Would someone in the Financial Aid Office mind explaining why Dartmouth recruitment officers from the Admissions Office go to inner-city and rural high schools promising the moon with a Dartmouth education but forget to mention that they might have to repay nearly $20,000 in loans after they graduate?
I finally paid off my Dartmouth loans last year after many years of personal financial struggle. I too graduated owing approximately $20,000 to the College. Yet when I graduated, I wanted to experience life in California instead of paying for the accident of being born poor. California offers many things in abundance, principal among them high rent. When I fell behind on my student loans, the song and dance from Dartmouth's Student Financial Services was that making arrangements to pay whatever you were able was OK. What is implicit in this arrangement is that the smaller payments you make each month result in lengthening the total time it takes to pay off whatever loans you have. So instead of being debt-free in five years, you might be done paying your loans in 10 years. Meanwhile, life goes on. Your more affluent classmates are buying houses and living the dream while you're barely making ends meet.
I'm not sure where future student indebtedness factors into the financial aid calculus at Dartmouth. I'm not sure the College administration cares. What is increasingly evident to me is that for the Admissions Office, recruitment goals have supplanted common sense. The expediency of quotas has led to irrationalism; the dictates of egalitarianism have required penny-pinching. My point is that the College cannot continue to skimp on scholarships while also enrolling poor students. One of the policies has to go.
I've never asked for or received a budgetary explanation as to why poor students' educations tuition, warts and all can't be fully funded gratis. But this time, I'm asking for it. I ask President Jim Yong Kim, future World Bank leader, why in the world can't a school with a $3 billion endowment fully fund the educations of the promising, bright young minds from around the country whose parents live paycheck to paycheck? Why must poor and middle-class students be saddled with crippling undergraduate debt while their more affluent peers graduate debt-free and enjoy full access to their meager post-graduate earnings? When will the College step up and do the right thing?
Like you, I'm tired of waiting.
