Endowment should finance student aid
Citizens often see university education as an economic equalizer, a way for lower class underdogs to meet richer academic peers in the laureled halls of America’s finest institutions, regardless of wealth and status. Admits to prestigious colleges are touted as people who’ve “made it”; through blood, sweat and tears, they’ve independently paved paths for a better life.
Recently, however, glaring inequities in the compositions of top schools’ student bodies have raised questions over many top universities’ claims to economic, racial and gender diversity on their campuses. Administrations of select elite American universities create hoards of money, putting endowments in investments while student financial aid remains stagnant.
A recent article in the New York Times displayed metrics comparing the ratio of top liberal arts schools’ endowments with the percentage of their students on Pell Grants, or need-based federal grants awarded toward the pursuit of undergraduate study. Results are mixed; top-tier universities such as Princeton, Yale and the California Institute of Technology boast endowments upwards of $700,000 per students, but admit relatively few (between 12 and 14 percent) of low-income undergraduates. In contrast, some universities with relatively smaller endowments such as Wesleyan, Susquehanna and Saint Mary’s boast student populations with substantially larger economic diversity. At USC, a school with an endowment that can serve each student around $118,000, about 25 percent of undergraduates receive Pell Grants, the fourth highest rate in the nation. A recent report published by Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby and Harvard professor Christopher Avery provides more proof that high-achieving, low-income students don’t even apply to the top-ranked universities they’re more than qualified for.
People attribute this gap mainly to a lack of knowledge rather than issues with instruction quality. Follow-up studies highlighted substantial increases in low-income applicants from schools that recruited at low-income schools or even left stacks of fliers at counseling centers. Despite public debate, educational equity involves more than tinkering with acceptance rates. It includes the support of an involved pipeline for underserved communities from high school applications to college graduations, involving services ranging from high school outreach and recruitment to academic services once students enroll. Unfortunately, fierce debates about affirmative action sometimes pave over student needs both before and after matriculation into universities. Even today, first-generation college students experience obnoxiously low graduation rates and struggle with adjustment at four-year universities.
Though educational studies often agree that equity depends on a support network from high school to college, universities at the forefront of American rankings rarely recruit from underserved districts. A recent NPR interview with Malcolm Gladwell, author and New Yorker writer, notes large swaths of top-tier schools’ massive endowments are earmarked toward private equity fund managers. One of the biggest alleged culprits was Yale, where only $170 million of the university’s $24 billion endowment went toward student financial aid. Almost triple that was spent on equity fees themselves. Similar trends were seen at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Texas, all elite schools receiving massive gifts from wealthy donors. University endowments, however, are exempt from corporate income taxes, and citizens continue to subsidize funds through tax breaks while students remain paying large sums for tuition.
Educational equity is more than an issue of passing an affirmative action bill, debating over racial quotas or changing admissions standards. It’s a holistic approach toward educational equity that recognizes achievement and provides developmental resources during students’ college experience. Currently, colleges obsessed with income from tuition actively recruit students who can pay full price rather than those with talent. Universities across the country may struggle to find solutions for providing full services to students, but schools with near billions in the hands of private fund managers should not be retracting from using that money to recruit from lower-class communities, mainly of color, who need it. At the very least, American citizens should not be subsidizing that money with tax breaks; tuition money that students funnel should empower the communities around it, not sit in hoards as student services for minority groups remain stagnant.
Especially at USC, one of the largest research institutions in the nation, diversity is a selling point that attracts the second-largest international population in the nation. The administration hangs 107 flags at the Von KleinSmid Center and boasts of its diversity on buildings and pamphlets alike. Organizations such as Troy Camp, the Joint Education Project and USC Science Outreach offer valuable services for increasing student retention and recruitment in the Los Angeles community. The school, however, can take a stronger stance on diversity; with only 2.2 percent of the University’s endowment directed toward undergraduate scholarship aid, we can all agree that too many students graduate with too much debt. Approaching endowments with students in mind, both at our school and beyond, may create a diversity that truly empowers communities rather than being another selling point or check mark.