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Inside Higher Education
Do Colleges
Need to Be Need Blind?
Some maintain that they can drop the policy and preserve access, but
those who have gone need blind have seen gains in student diversity.
July 21, 2016
By Rick Seltzer
Ceasing need-blind admissions is a politically tenuous move for
colleges and universities -- need-blind policies, associated with
meritocracy and equal opportunity, cut to the heart of institutional
values that many students, staff and faculty hold dear.
But sometimes those values have run up against cold, hard finances.
Admitting students without considering their need for financial aid can
make it difficult to control budgets from year to year. That’s
particularly true when the policy is paired with promises to meet the
full demonstrated financial need of applicants. And it is that
combination of policies that truly makes it possible to tell a student
without money that he or she is on equal footing with a trust-fund teen
during admissions decisions.
Take, for example, Haverford College outside of Philadelphia. Some at
the college recently criticized its decision to move away from
need-blind admissions. Haverford’s financial aid budget could fail to
meet the needs of future classes under its current model, it projected.
So it decided to move to a so-called need-aware model, admitting most
applicants without looking at financial need while reserving the option
of admitting a handful of students with the aid budget in mind.
A student, Hannah Krohn, blasted the decision in a column in the
student newspaper The Clerk, referring to the policy change as a move
to "financially viable diversity" even as the college says it is
committed to diversity.
"If we are going to shift to becoming a need-aware school, we need to
be explicit that either our goals have changed or our level of
commitment has," Krohn wrote. "Our budget is the tangible
representation of our priorities. There will always be money for things
we value."
While its decisions has sparked strong words, Haverford is far from the
only institution to make changes involving need-blind admissions in
recent years. Some have dropped need-blind policies, others have
publicly evaluated them and a few have decided to become need blind.
Changes away from need-blind admissions are often accompanied by an
outcry of concern that institutions are kowtowing to wealthy students
who are able to shoulder the cost of full tuition -- at the cost of
accepting equally qualified students who may come from families with
lower incomes. But college leaders argue that does not have to be the
case.
Institutions can focus on admitting and serving students from diverse
backgrounds regardless of the label placed on their policies,
presidents and admissions officers said. A few even argued
non-need-blind policies could be the best way for colleges and
universities to admit and support students from low-income families in
a future of increasing income inequality. Under that line of reasoning,
admitting some students who pay full tuition -- or close to it -- gives
colleges and universities more resources to support students who have
less ability to pay.
Others from institutions that have recently adopted need-blind policies
say the move can be an important stake in the ground proclaiming a
college’s commitment to fairness, first-generation students and those
without deep pockets. Yet even they agree need-blind admissions can’t
continue if an institution is bleeding money.
Of course, there are many colleges -- community colleges, for example
-- that would never consider evaluating a student based on family
income. But the small group of elite private institutions that have
been or still are need blind have historically represented an ideal to
which many institutions have aspired. The ideal resonates with many
students and families.
Data from a sampling of institutions that have adopted or moved away
from need-blind policies in recent years are mixed. Need-blind policies
appear to play a role in attracting applicants from different
backgrounds and can even lead to a fund-raising boon. Still, dropping
need-blind policies isn’t necessarily a death blow to diversity --
results show it is possible to use a policy change to bolster
financials while largely holding a line and admitting low-income
students.
The label of “need blind” still matters. But the overarching policy
might not be as important as the way admissions policies are carried
out in the real world, according to college officials. The trick is in
the details.
“At the end of the day, the single most important thing is who you
actually have on campus,” said Brian C. Rosenberg, the president of
Macalester College in St. Paul. “If you have a need-blind policy, but
three-quarters are full-pay students, are you really doing more to
provide access than a situation that’s need aware but has 80 percent to
90 percent of students who are receiving aid?”
Macalester dropped need-blind admissions with a policy change in 2006.
Since then, it’s actually cut the portion of students who pay full
tuition, Rosenberg said -- from about a third to 20 percent. But quoted
tuition has also increased during the time, from about $30,000 to more
than $50,000.
Against the increase in quoted tuition, statistics show the portion of
Macalester students on campus receiving need-based aid is holding
roughly steady. The college has increased the amount of money it
dedicates to need-based aid. It has also put more into non-need-based
aid, however.
Need-based scholarship or grant aid went to 68.5 percent of
Macalester’s degree-seeking undergraduate students in 2015-16,
according to the Common Data Set for the college -- 1,456 out of 2,127
full-time undergraduates. That’s just slightly below 2005-06, when 69
percent of undergraduates were awarded need-based scholarship or grant
aid -- 1,258 out of 1,822. In the prior year, 2004-05, 69 percent of
undergraduates had also been awarded need-based scholarship or grant
aid -- 1,274 out of 1,847.
Need-based self-help aid -- student loans and work study -- saw a
larger drop. For 2015-16, 64 percent of full-time undergraduates
received need-based self-help aid. The portion was about 69 percent in
2005-06 and 2004-05.
Macalester met 100 percent of need for students that were awarded
need-based aid in all of the years. Its average need-based scholarship
and grant package rose drastically, spiking to $35,887 for full-time
undergraduates in 2015-16, up from $19,806 in 2005-06 and $18,351 in
2004-05.
At the same time, Macalester provided more non-need-based scholarship
and grant aid. In 2015-16, the college estimated 212 full-time
undergraduates judged to have no financial need were awarded
non-need-based scholarships or grants, up from 107 in 2005-06 and 103
in 2004-05. The average size of those awards also went up sharply,
hitting $12,957 in 2015-16 from $4,686 in 2005-06 and $4,988 in
2004-05. Macalester also started awarding non-need-based aid to some
students determined to have financial need during that time span, its
Common Data Set answers show.
Consequently, Macalester awarded more total need-based and
non-need-based aid over time. Non-need-based aid rose at a sharper
rate, with institutional non-need-based aid spiking to $2.8 million in
2015-16, up from $513,519 in 2005-06 and $521,482 in 2004-05. Even with
the steep increase, it was dwarfed by institutional need-based aid
awarded, which rose to $50.1 million in 2015-16 from $22.5 million in
2005-06 and $20.9 million in 2004-05.
The numbers reflect the common trend across higher education: college
costs rising faster than students’ ability and willingness to pay. As a
result, colleges are pressured to offer more financial aid to students.
Sometimes that aid goes to students with demonstrated need, and in
other cases colleges can decide to use aid to try to attract a student
who can pay a higher price -- and provide more net revenue for the
bottom line.
“Discount rates have been driven up year after year at private colleges
because the gap between what you cost and what people are able to pay
gets larger,” Rosenberg said. “It means the gap you have to fill in
gets larger and larger.”
An important point of emphasis for Macalester was remaining financially
accessible after it decided it needed to move away from need-blind
admissions, Rosenberg said. And the college has improved in several
metrics.
Macalester did not share a breakdown of first-year Pell Grant
recipients, which would be a rough proxy for low-income students
enrolling as freshmen. But the total number of Macalester
undergraduates receiving Pell Grants went from 237 in 2004-05 and 211
in 2005-06 to 344 in 2014-15, according to U.S. Department of Education
data. The measure is difficult to read over that time frame because it
coincides with increases in both Macalester’s undergraduate enrollment
and the number of Pell Grant recipients nationally. Still, comparing
Pell Grant recipients to total undergraduate enrollment reported on the
Common Data Set shows proportionally more Pell Grant recipients on
Macalester’s campus -- 16.9 percent in 2014-15 versus 11.6 percent in
2005-06 and 12.8 percent in 2004-05.
“We have not become in any way -- economically, nationally, ethnically
-- a less diverse place,” Rosenberg said. “Based upon the demographics
of our applicant pool, it has not begun to skew away from students with
high need.”
Macalester has grown its percentage of students of color by roughly
three percentage points in the last 10 years. In the fall of 2006, 320
U.S. students of color were enrolled, or 17 percent of the student
body. In the fall of 2015 that had grown to 439, or 20 percent.
The college is unlikely to go back to need-blind admissions unless
significant macroeconomic changes rock higher education, Rosenberg
said. He thinks it is more important that the college is continuing to
meet the full financial need for the students it admits. Ultimately, he
believes the move away from need-blind admissions was necessary to
ensure the college is financially stable and able to fully educate its
students in the future.
Macalester’s financial statements make it clear that the college has
been able to boost net revenue from tuition and fees. Net tuition and
fees revenue -- the amount of revenue left after subtracting student
aid and scholarships -- rose to $46.9 million at the end of
Macalester’s 2015 fiscal year. It was $28.7 million at the end of 2006
and $27.2 million at the end of 2005.
“We needed some mechanism, some lever, to control the amount of aid we
provided,” Rosenberg said. “I think it’s trying to balance a series of
promises we make to people, and a series of promises we make to
society.”
Fluctuations at Wesleyan
More recently, Wesleyan University in Connecticut announced in 2012 it
would end need-blind admissions. The class entering in the fall of 2013
was admitted under a need-aware policy. Since then, the university said
it’s admitted an average of more than 90 percent of its applicants
without regard to financial need.
It’s early to definitively identify a pattern in the percentage of
first-time, first-year Pell Grant recipients since the change. However,
the measure has moved higher in recent years after a one-year drop
coinciding with the start of need-aware admissions. Before Wesleyan
moved away from need-blind admissions, first-time full-year Pell Grant
recipients accounted for 17 percent of incoming first-year students in
the fall of 2009, 16 percent in 2010, 21 percent in 2011 and 18 percent
in 2012. In the fall of 2013, the first class that was need aware, the
measure fell to 15 percent. It rose to 19 percent in 2014 and 22
percent in 2015. Those latter numbers are well above those of many
elite liberal arts colleges.
The number of first-generation students also dropped among first-year
students in 2013 before rebounding. Among entering freshmen,
first-generation students to attend a four-year college dropped to 13
percent at Wesleyan in 2013, down from 18 percent and 16 percent
respectively in 2011 and 2012. The measure rose to 16 percent in 2014
and 17 percent in 2015.
The percentage of first-year students receiving financial aid follows
much the same pattern -- 49 percent in 2011 and 48 percent in 2012,
giving way to 42 percent in the first year of non-need-blind
admissions, 2013. It recovered to 46 percent and 51 percent in the next
two years.
The trend also holds for first-year students of color. The mark was 41
percent for students enrolling in 2011 and 39 percent the next year. It
slipped to 37 percent in 2013 and has recovered since, notching 40
percent and 42 percent for the next two incoming classes.
Early returns indicate the move away from need-blind admissions
moderated growth trends in the amount of financial aid Wesleyan has
awarded. Scholarships and other aid had grown 6.1 percent from the
fiscal year ending in June 2010 to June 2011, 13.8 percent from 2011 to
2012 and 6.7 percent from 2012 to 2013. But it then fell by 2.5 percent
in the fiscal year ending in June 2014, the first year with a class
admitted under need-aware admissions. It proceeded to grow more slowly
in the year ending in June 2015, increasing 4.1 percent to $55.3
million.
Wesleyan’s annual financial report for the year ending in 2014 said
that year’s decrease in financial aid came as the university’s discount
rate fell to 34 percent, down from 36 percent in the previous fiscal
year.
“The decrease reflected the policy change to need aware for first-year
students and an actual lower discount rate than budgeted for this
incoming class,” the report said.
The Positive Impact of Going Need Blind
Some evidence suggests colleges and universities can increase their
applicant pools by becoming need blind. Hamilton College in upstate New
York decided to adopt need-blind admissions for the class entering in
the fall of 2010 and has seen gains in both students receiving Pell
Grants and diversity measures. It also felt an immediate boost in
fund-raising.
Hamilton had been need aware, said Monica Inzer, vice president and
dean of admission and financial aid. The college granted some students
financial aid as an incentive to enroll and did not extend admissions
offers to some demonstrating high need. About 4 to 5 percent of
noninternational freshmen were affected because of financial
considerations.
The percentage of first-year students receiving Pell Grants rose in the
immediate years after Hamilton went need blind, Inzer said. It was 13
percent in 2009-10, and then jumped to 17 percent the next year. Since
then it has bounced around at generally higher levels, notching 13
percent in 2011-12 before rising to as high as 18 percent in 2012-13
and spending the next four years alternating between 15 and 17 percent.
Also rising was the number of U.S. students of color as a percentage of
full-time enrollment. The mark rose from 17.4 percent in 2009-10 to 23
percent in 2015-16, increasing every year. Over the same time frame,
Hamilton’s number of admitted students held relatively steady, moving
from 1,390 in 2009 to 1,357 in 2016 and never rising higher than 1,441
in the years between.
Inzer wasn’t willing to attribute the gains solely to the admissions
policy. She pointed out that demographics in the country have paved the
way for more diverse student bodies. But the policy has become an
important part of Hamilton’s identify and a talking point to discuss
with prospective students and families.
“In general, this has signaled to the rest of the world that this is a
college that cares about access,” Inzer said.
It also sparked donations. Hamilton planned to raise $40 million in
three years to support the need-blind policy. It took about a year and
a half to raise the money.
“Our alumni went wild for this,” Inzer said. “They really supported it.”
Still, Inzer couldn’t promise the policy will be around forever. At the
end of the day, the books still have to balance.
“We still have a budget, and I work really closely with the CFO,” Inzer
said. “If this got out of whack, we’d have to look at it. If we had to
cut other things at the college that were important to us, we’d have to
look at this.”
Hamilton’s discount rate has crept up steadily since the year it went
to need-blind admissions. It was 30.2 percent in 2009-10, the year
before the new policy, and 36.6 percent in 2015-16 after increasing
every year except for 2012-13.
The percentage of Hamilton’s budget dedicated to financial aid has
followed the same path. In the 2009 fiscal year, 17.9 percent of the
college’s operating expenses were financial aid. That portion rose
every year through 2016, when it was 21.7 percent.
Another institution to return to need-blind admissions in recent years
is Vassar College. Vassar dropped its need-blind policy in the late
1990s, citing finances, but adopted it again in 2007. Since then,
applications from students of color have doubled, offers of admission
have increased, the selectivity of admission offers has increased and
enrollments are up, according to Jeff Kosmacher, a spokesman.
The median family income of freshman financial aid recipients has
generally trended down in recent Vassar classes. The class admitted in
2006 posted a median family income of $100,517 when adjusted for
inflation to 2015 levels. In the years after Vassar announced its
return to need-blind admissions, that measure declined annually through
the class admitted in 2013, when it hit $75,464. It was higher in the
next two years at $82,054 and $80,803, respectively.
Vassar’s discount rate has picked up in recent years as well. Vassar
College scholarships as a percentage of gross tuition revenue have
hovered in the 50 percent range in recently admitted classes, coming in
at 51.7 percent for the class admitted in 2015. That’s up from 30
percent for the class admitted in 2006.
Operating budgets at Vassar show some variation in the years
immediately returning to need-blind admissions. Net tuition and fees
dropped between the 2007-08 and 2010-11 fiscal years as financial aid
jumped from $32.7 million to $53.7 million. Tuition and fees grew
during that time from $93.4 million to $105.6 million, not keeping pace
with the spike in financial aid. The college ran operating deficits for
four years after 2007-08.
But in more recent years, Vassar has returned to an operating surplus
as tuition and fees grew faster than financial aid. Tuition and fee
revenue rose from $112.8 million in the 2011-12 fiscal year to $126.8
million in 2014-15, while financial aid rose from $54 million to $58.7
million.
Although they may be influenced by the financial crisis and recovery,
the trends point to need-blind tuition making it harder to control
revenue from tuition and fees. That in turn can place more pressure on
endowment returns and fund-raising as revenue sources.
“I think the challenge now is the question about sustainability,” said
Art Rodriguez, dean of admission and financial aid at Vassar. “The fact
that the financial markets really haven’t rebounded, and we’re not
seeing the same rate of return on investment in endowments that we saw
back in the ’90s and early 2000s -- that has complicated the math in
trying to balance our budgets.”
Vassar is not need blind for transfer and international students. That
gives it a small tool to help balance revenue.
But besides the books, Vassar sees need-blind admissions as a way to
attract and support a broader, deeper pool of students.
“I think it provides us sort of a tool to try to grow an applicant pool
in ways we would like to see,” Rodriguez said. “I wouldn’t say it’s
just ethnic and racial diversity. It’s also thinking about the
geographic diversity, thinking about the range of academic interests
that students have. We’re also interested in supporting the various
programs at the college.”
For the time being, Vassar’s board has proven willing to support the
policy, Rodriguez said. But at the end of the day, if the dollars
aren’t there, they aren’t there.
“We, like everyone else, are looking at the financial markets and
seeing what’s happening,” Rodriguez said. “I think that does call into
question and further require discussion for us as a college to say, if
we’re not having strong returns, what can we manage?”
That theme emerges again and again at need-blind colleges and
universities -- the policy can be in place only so long as it does not
bankrupt the institution.
True Opportunity
Grinnell College in Iowa for several years has been discussing its
need-blind policy and how it fits with its policy of meeting 100
percent of students’ demonstrated financial need. Trustees are first
and most concerned about how to meet 100 percent of admitted students’
need in the future, said Joe Bagnoli, vice president for enrollment and
dean of admission and financial aid.
“We believe that access without financial support is not the same thing
as opportunity, and we want to make sure that the students that we
admit are able to afford to walk through the doors,” Bagnoli said.
“That requires us to underwrite their need with pretty significant
financial aid dollars. At Grinnell, that totals almost $50 million a
year for an operating budget that’s about $117 million a year.”
For the time being, Grinnell is continuing to be need blind. But it’s
still moving to review the policy for 2018. Afterward, it plans to
review it every two or three years.
Grinnell is trying to grow its philanthropic support today in order to
bolster its financial ability to keep need-blind admissions. But its
leaders admit that might not always be possible.
“Our intention is to be able to hang on to need-blind admission as long
as we can,” Bagnoli said. “But I have to say, if it came down to what
it’s coming down to at Haverford and what it previously came down to
for Wesleyan -- either we’re not going to be able to fund these
students, or we’re not going to be able to admit them -- we will have
to come back to that question.”
Grinnell’s discount rate is about 60 percent for the total student body
today, Bagnoli said. It was slightly lower for the last several
incoming classes. Looking at the metric over 20 years, it has risen.
Over the last few, however, it’s been falling. Five years ago, Grinnell
anticipated a discount rate of 73 percent this year, an alarming figure
for those crunching the numbers on budget projections.
Some have argued that need-blind admissions have taken on an outsize
role as representing college opportunity. The policy is just one tool
admissions officers have available to build diverse student bodies from
different backgrounds, Bagnoli said.
Grinnell’s administration is also concerned about the effect growing
gaps in income could have on applicant pools -- even under need-blind
policies. More wealthy families are pouring money into their children’s
education at the same time the number of low-income families in poor
neighborhoods rises, said Grinnell President Raynard S. Kington.
Meanwhile, the number of seats at institutions is not rising.
“On one hand, you have an increase in demand, and you also have an
increasing difference in preparation,” Kington said. “In that context,
a need-blind policy might not be such a great thing.”
Kington gave the example of one student who has to care for younger
siblings at home because of a crunch in family finances. Even if the
academic portion of that student’s application is identical to that of
another student from a wealthier family, he or she might not come off
as well in the admissions process if the wealthy student has impressive
extracurricular activities.
Plus, almost every metric evaluated in admissions -- test scores, class
rank, school district quality -- is correlated with wealth, Kington
said. In that context, students from lower-income families might need a
boost in the admissions process, not need-blind admissions.
“People assume need aware only means focusing on wealthy students,”
Kington said. “But in this new scenario of increasing inequality, the
increasing number and preparation of wealthy students, you might need
to be need aware so you can make sure you give a bump to those
students.”
A major underlying question in any move from need blind, however, is
what a college does with the additional net tuition revenue raised.
Does it use the extra money from the higher-paying 5 or 10 percent of
its students admitted with need considered in order to fund low-income
students? Or do the slots that would otherwise go to lower-income
students end up generating cash for some other part of operations? Only
the institutions can answer that question -- and then they typically
have to try to convince wary students and faculty that they are
upholding their values.
Kington acknowledged that a decision to move away from need-blind
admissions might be interpreted by some as a cash grab, a pursuit of
wealthy students over a commitment to academic fairness. The original
thinking behind need-blind policies was that they were a signal to
students that they would be welcome at institutions, he said.
Now, some see the policy as having a broader meaning.
“It’s not just the campus community that would be concerned about this
as a core value, but it’s also the counseling community across the
United States,” Bagnoli said. “The title of need-blind admission and
the gold standard that’s associated with that seems to create an
understanding among the counseling community about institutions that
are, in fact, committed to this population of students.”
In that light, talking about any potential changes is key, Kington said.
“I think the good news is we’re saying we’re going to take a look,” he
said. “I think a lot of other institutions are just doing it and not
announcing it first.”
Read this and other articles at Inside Higher Educaton
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