FOCUS: The future of need-blind admissions

Ben Franklin, champion of education for rich and poor alike, would not be pleased to hear the news. The University, increasingly burdened by the high costs of financial aid, may have to abandon its policy of need-blind admissions sometime this decade unless new sources of revenue can be found, according to top-level University administrators. Administrators stress that any change in the current policy, under which students are admitted to the University regardless of their ability to pay, would come only as a last resort and with tremendous reluctance. But come it may. Here's why: · Federal financial aid has not risen over the last ten years, and the University's relatively weak endowment has not been able to pick up the slack. As a result, the University must now devote three times as much of its annual operating budget to financial aid as it did in 1980. · At the same time, growth in other areas of spending, such as faculty salaries and benefits and the uncertainty of future state funding make it more doubtful the University can continue to afford the rising costs of financial aid without new revenue sources. The University has attempted to minimize the potential effects of what Provost Michael Aiken called "major dilemmas several years down the road" by focusing on increasing the endowment for undergraduate financial aid and streamlining bureaucracy. But administrators acknowledge that although these efforts may be successful, the added revenue will probably fall short. "There is the possibility of having to make decisions about what's more important and what's less important," Senior Vice President Marna Whittington said. "We are going to have to prioritize." Administrators say that since the quality and diversity of the student body is a top priority, all efforts will be made to keep need-blind admissions. But they add there are other top priorities that have to be funded, such as quality research and quality faculty. And while Aiken insists this is not an "all-or-nothing situation," he concedes the University may be "on a collision course with tradeoffs" some years in the future. "We're at the point of recognizing that in the long term our resources are not going to sustain the vision we have," John Gould, executive director of the president's office, said last week. Faced with problems of this magnitude, administrators from several University offices -- including budget, provost, planning, student financial services, admissions and senior vice president -- have been searching for solutions. So far, while the problems are all too clear, they say the solutions have been maddeningly elusive. · If the University abandons need-blind admissions in the future -- and many administrators said they doubted it would at least for several more years -- it would join a growing list of schools that no longer admit all their students need-blind. At such high-powered schools like Brown University, Smith College and Bryn Mawr College, to name a few, applicants are admitted need-blind until funding runs out, meaning only a small number are admitted with ability to pay as one of the factors. At Smith, which ended need-blind admissions last year, admissions officers considered ability to pay for just the final three percent of students accepted into the class of 1995, according to Mira Smith, the college's director of financial aid. She said the best students were accepted without financial considerations, while only students "on the fence" were not admitted need-blind. Whittington said such a policy would be one alternative to the University's current admissions policy. But several administrators said even that kind of system would violate the "principle" of need-blind admissions. Gould, playing the devil's advocate, suggested the University could still perhaps attract top-notch students if "we let the market work" and made every applicant's wealth a consideration. But he said this system would not protect the University's "educational mission" to provide a learning center for people from all walks of life. · The University's lofty aim to admit the best students -- not just the richest -- has come with an equally lofty price tag, because the University promises to satisfy the financial need of all its students. This means the University agrees to help cover whatever costs remain after the parental and student contributions, and outside scholarships and grants, by providing Penn Grants. Over the past 10 years, stagnant federal aid levels have made this commitment steadily more expensive because the annual total cost of attending the University has jumped 163 percent, from $8600 to $22,600 per student. While federal and state grants to University undergraduates totaled $6.4 million in 1979, by 1990 the number had actually dropped to $5.9 million. To compensate, the total value of Penn Grants soared from $8.5 million to almost $29.7 million -- a 249-percent increase. Financial aid officials are cautiously hopeful that the current reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act may expand the federal Pell Grant program for the neediest of students, and more importantly, expand and reorganize the Guaranteed Student Loan program, which has remained largely unchanged for years. William Schilling, the University's director of financial aid, said between 36 and 40 percent of undergraduates receive Penn Grants, while 55 percent of the student body receives some form of aid, including federal Stafford loans. Schilling said he would like to see the maximum loan available to students increased. He said that although the move would force students to shoulder the burden later on, the loans would make it easier to attend the University and would ease the pressure on the University to provide grants. The rising dependence of financial aid on the University's unrestricted funding -- money not earmarked for specific purposes -- becomes even more precarious considering some of that money comes from the state. In the wake of the recent budget crisis in which Gov. Robert Casey proposed cutting the University's $37.6 million 1991-92 appropriation nearly in half, some administrators say the University cannot count on receiving as much state funding in the future. Aiken said losing state funding in the next year or two would compound the problem by "telescoping" what the University may experience in ten years, and "bring us back to the brink of tradeoffs." In a worst-case scenario, administrators could be forced to choose between allowing the quality of some programs to drop or cutting some out completely to ensure uniform excellence at the University. Whittington said under such circumstances, she "would hope [the University would] choose to do a smaller number of things well." Gould agreed, saying selective mediocrity might be "more harmful to the school's reputation." But he said any such cuts could be made so the University could "still protect the academic core."

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