As many students and their families are well aware, attending this college is not cheap. A report by The Chronicle of Higher Education for the 2014-15 academic year listed Dartmouth as the eighth most expensive college in the U.S. by sticker price. Given the College’s rural location, the steep price of a Dartmouth education compared to elite, urban institutions, such as Harvard University, seems puzzling. Still, this is America, the land of “be born rich or stay poor,” so college tuition nationwide is high and continues to rise. Yet what makes the College’s tuition unacceptable is not only the high price tag, but also the meager financial aid packages that often make attending an institution that supposedly meets “100 percent of demonstrated need” stressful — even impossible — for all but the richest of students.
Particularly aggravating is the College’s inclusion of loans and federal work-study as components of financial aid packages. For a student with $30,000 in demonstrated need, for example, less than 80 percent of this is covered with grants and general scholarship assistance. The remaining cost is split between loans and work-study, which are automatically included in financial aid packages. Loans, however, are not aid — they are bandages used to temporarily hide issues that clearly need stitches. The inclusion of loans is particularly ludicrous at an institution like the College, which attracts the world’s brightest and most ambitious students, many of whom will go on to pursue graduate school, only to burden them with undergraduate loans that will accumulate interest once they’ve graduated. On its website, the College boasts that the “average student debt for all four years combined [is] $16,339.” Administrators should not be proud of this — they should be ashamed.
Work-study faces similar issues. The College claims to value “academic excellence” in its mission statement, a sentiment that administrators have reiterated in the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” plan to strengthen academic rigor. Yet forcing students to cover the cost of their tuition with work-study inevitably pulls them away from their studies and limits the time available to pursue the “comprehensive out-of-classroom experience” advertised in the College’s mission statement. A student who knows that a portion of their tuition hinges on their ability to work will likely feel considerable stress on top of academics.
Indeed, financial aid requirements can have negative consequences for health. A recent study showed that adults with a higher student loan debt are more likely to report symptoms of depression. The 2014 “The American Freshman” study found that U.S. freshmen today are less happy and report greater concern about the cost of college than those of previous decades. Administrators need to address the root causes of mental health issues on campus — including anxieties caused by financial aid policies.
The College’s financial aid policies do not consider enough factors. The financial aid office prides itself on giving free tuition to students whose families make less than $100,000 and possess typical assets. Even in this income bracket, however, anything beyond a roof over your head might be counted as a liquid asset and factor into aid consideration. The College also does not adjust for varying costs of living, with no distinction between incomes that sustain families in the most and least expensive cities in the U.S. The result is a system that squeezes out middle-class families who make too much to qualify for generous aid packages but too little to comfortably afford tuition out of pocket. Moreover, resources that could go to providing more financial aid to needy students fund projects like “Moving Dartmouth Forward” — something not all students actively support.
Yet these arguments will not stop the 2.9 percent tuition increase announced by the Board of Trustees. Though the College’s positive spin compares the increase to historical rates and increases elsewhere, this will not significantly alter our ranking as one of the most expensive institutions in the country. The 6.6 percent increase in financial aid, touted as an accomplishment that demonstrates commitment to students, does not excuse the tuition hike. I can only hope that the College will use this boost to provide more real aid rather than loans.
A Dartmouth education should be accessible to students of all income backgrounds, but the College will need to do more than a slight increase the financial aid budget to achieve that goal.
