Staff Editorial: lesson to be learned

Time and time again, University administrators have said that when it comes to increasing financial aid, there's not much that can be done.

They say it so often, maybe we can just call it "The endowment line."

"Penn's endowment just isn't as hefty as our competitors'," they say, "so there's no money left for major financial aid improvements."

They repeated the line when Harvard University handed out $2,000 -- no questions asked -- to all financial aid recipients. They said it again when that same institution, as well as Princeton and Yale universities, dramatically overhauled their aid systems so that the costs of education wouldn't be so burdensome to needy students.

But even through all those changes -- those threats to Penn's competitiveness in the market for top students -- we keep hearing that line, but see no action to change it.

Perhaps the needed impetus to change just arrived.

Recently, the Journal for Blacks in Higher Education released figures showing that as Princeton has dramatically increased undergraduate financial aid, their matriculation yield among low-income minority students has skyrocketed.

The numbers are staggering. In 1997, Princeton's low-income minority yield was 49 percent. In 2001, immediately after the wholesale aid changes, a full 65 percent of those same students decided that Old Nassau was right for them.

The lesson here is simple: increasing financial aid, all other things considered, helps attract students -- especially those that need it.

That's a lesson that Penn would be wise to learn, considering its long struggle to attract and keep top minority and low-income students. And it's a lesson that should be particularly salient now, especially since Princeton -- a school that still bears the unfortunate moniker as a bastion of the white elite -- now boasts a 9.5 percent African-American student population in the Class of 2005, compared to Penn's 6.5 percent.

The path to financial aid riches, of course, is not an easy one. And it's certainly not made any easier by the nation's economic difficulties.

But Penn must soon outline a similarly comprehensive plan for addressing financial aid if it wishes to remain competitive with the Princetons of the world, and a viable educational option in the eyes of less well-off students.

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