Staff Editorial: Keep Penn affordable

To the surprise of no one, the University announced today that total undergraduate charges will in fact rise again.

Next year, Penn undergraduates will pay about $2,000 more than they did this year, an increase of 4.6 percent. The percent increase is slightly less than it was last year, when total undergraduate charges rose by 4.9 percent.

Penn's upward trend in terms of overall costs -- which includes tuition, room and board and fees -- is, of course, not unique. This year's increase is about an average rise as far as the University's peer schools go -- all fall within about one percentage point of each other.

The seemingly endless journey skyward that Penn's sticker price has taken over the last decade is breathtaking. For the 1991-1992 school year, a Penn education cost $15,894. This year, students are paying more than twice that -- $34,614.

This explosion in costs is unacceptable and unjustifiable, but it can hardly be called a Penn phenomenon. All of its peer institutions are within about $2,000 of each other.

For large segments of the population, coming to an elite university is made impossible by the ever-increasing cost. As the average tuition at such schools pushes $40,000 (a price that, at the current rate of growth, Penn will reach in three years), that number will only increase.

Fortunately, some of these universities have recognized that the less well-heeled simply cannot keep pace and have announced major initiatives to make the unaffordable affordable.

Unfortunately, Penn is not one of these institutions. Princeton University eliminated student loans. Harvard decided to give qualified students an additional $2,000 a year in aid. Yale upped its financial aid budget by almost 30 percent, most of the increase earmarked for increased grants to make the school affordable to middle and lower income families.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, for Penn to match these moves. It does not have the resources.

But it has only increased its financial aid budget by 12.5 percent since 1999, and there have been no major initiatives in the same vein, if not on the same scale, as those at Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

If the University is to continue participating in the national game to make the cost of higher education laughably absurd, it must do more than it currently does to ensure that people other than the children of millionaires can matriculate here. While perhaps something on the order of last year's changes at three of its Ivy peers are not possible, surely the University can do more.

Increasing financial aid in the age of ballooning costs must be one of the University's highest priorities.

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