Excellence, Affordability or Both? (or Neither??)

In the 10/16/11 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, I found a story regarding “access or excellence” describing the conundrum faced by St. Mary’s College of Maryland. That institution has a dual mission as a public, honors college that is supposed to be both affordable and academically excellent. According to the article, in 1992 the school was charged with “providing state residents with the same educational environment they would find at a small, private college” while remaining “affordable.” Since I had never heard of either St. Mary’s College of Maryland or the concept of a public honors college, I was intrigued.

The article itself highlights the incoming vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, Patricia Goldsmith. The institution’s president, Mr. Joseph Urgo, has only been on board since summer of 2010 but he has already stated an interest in switching to a financial aid model that focuses on need-based aid rather than merit-based aid—a tactic that carried over from his previous institution (Hamilton College), which implemented “need-blind” admissions processes for the incoming fall 2010 class. Both Mr. Urgo and Ms. Goldsmith envision a transition from one type of aid to the other as opposed to an immediate switch. Then, in today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed I found an article that states that according to a report written by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics that was released yesterday, the trend in financial aid is towards merit-based awards—exactly opposite of the intention at SMCM.

The concept of need-blind admission is interesting because it purportedly allows schools to focus solely on the academic (and extra-curricular, it is assumed) portfolio of student applicants, without concern for that student’s ability to pay the tuition. The school then covers the student’s demonstrated need through a financial aid package, which hopefully leans more towards grants that do not have to be repaid as opposed to loans that do have to be repaid. The problem with this, as was demonstrated by Tufts University in 2009, is that if you do not pay attention to a student’s ability to pay then you are likely to run out of financial aid budget before you have run out of admissions slots. In response, Tufts made admissions decisions for the final 5% of their 2009-2010 class using need-aware criteria. In the most recent years, although they have not officially changed their need-blind policy, it sounds as if Tufts has moved away from making need-blind promises to their incoming students so that they can keep their promises of financial aid to their continuing students. In other words, they do not have the funding to maintain the need-blind admission strategy they implemented to great fanfare just a few years ago. Tufts and other schools are now relying more heavily on early-admission decisions and international undergraduate student enrollment because those groups tend to be wealthier. If a top-tier school like Tufts is having trouble with its bottom line, imagine the challenges for second-tier schools like SMCM.

Indeed, finances are already apparently an issue for SMCM because according to the U.S. Department of Education in summer 2011, SMCM was noted as having the fourth highest tuition among four year public colleges with its in-state tuition and fees of $14,445 (2011-12); Room and board adds an additional $10,915 (2011-12) to the student’s bill. These figures do not seem “affordable” to me. Is it asking too much for a public school to try to be exactly like a private liberal arts college but without the private school price tag?