GF discuss merit aid for college students

At Tuesday's General Faculty meeting, College President Nancy Dye appealed to faculty members to share their thoughts on the possibility of offering more merit-based scholarships to worthy students in the college.

As Dye and Vice President for Finance Andy Evans told Conservatory Faculty members at a meeting last week, decreased tuition revenue in both the college and the Conservatory and an increase in the amount of financial aid spending over the last four years have combined to leave the College in need of a means of restructuring its financial aid practices.

While arts and sciences divisional administrators have traditionally hesitated to offer merit scholarships, Dye said the college has been heading in the direction of awarding more merit aid since the end of its strictly need-blind admissions policy in 1994.

"We're living in a rapidly changing financial aid environment," Dye said, adding that Oberlin needs to keep up in order to compete with other liberal arts colleges and even Ivy League schools.

According to Dye, 16 percent of Oberlin's current first-year class is on some form of merit aid, a number significantly lower than that of leading and second-tier liberal arts schools.

"Colleges like Wooster and Denison are trying to use the current financial aid market as a way of upgrading the quality of students by offering a substantial amount of aid. We do compete with them, despite what some people think," Dye said.

This competition means that students who cannot afford to attend Oberlin are going to these and other schools instead, and students who can better afford to pay Oberlin's tuition are still turning it down in favor of aid now offered in greater quantities by Ivy League schools, according to Dye.

"As we lose students who can or will pay to come here, it becomes clear that the economic diversity of the student body provides equity," Dye said. "If we lose that diversity, it may sound paradoxical, but we'll become more dependent on tuition to provide scholarship money. So offering some merit aid can help provide more need-based merit aid."

Faculty members were subdued when Dye gave them the floor, but eventually began debating the pros and cons of offering merit aid.

"This notion of getting into a bidding war for students, and in a sense getting a reputation for doing so, could have repercussions in the future," Professor of History Gary Kornblith said. "What I'm afraid of is that we'll end up providing a discount to wealthy students and end up with the reputation as the type of 'country club' school we swore we'd never be."

Professor of Religion Grover Zinn expressed similar concerns about the way many institutions use financial aid packages to entice students. "Merit aid isn't evil within itself, but I think it is evil if it cuts into other commitments you have in terms of other financial packages. Some institutions are using aid to manipulate their student bodies," Zinn said.

Dye said she initially felt reluctant to offer more merit money for similar reasons, but that financial aid distribution cannot continue precisely as it is now. "We cannot equitably use more than is prudent of our resources now at the expense of future generations of Oberlin College students," she said.

Dean of the College Clayton Koppes reassured faculty members that no big changes in policy are taking place. "What we're talking about at the moment is being more need-sensitive; we're not talking about some huge increase in merit aid, at least not in the short-run," he said.

Dye agreed. "We're not talking here about some shift in Oberlin's general policies. Our goals with respect to both excellence and diversity are continuing to be realized and enhanced," she said.