Draft RPC Resolution for November 2004 Faculty Meeting

from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base

http://macalester.edu/rpc/oncampus/resolution.pdf

Draft—RPC Resolution for the November Faculty Meeting

Here is a draft of a resolution that RPC is preparing to bring before the faculty at the November 10, 2004 faculty meeting. We will ask the faculty to vote on this resolution and thereby endorse its content.

RESOLVED: The Macalester College Faculty recommends to the Board of Trustees that:

1. Financial aid policies be maintained to meet the full financial need of all admitted and continuing students;
2. The College establish a specific budget for financial aid, setting this budget at a level that will enable us to continue to enroll a larger proportion of financially needy students than most other colleges of high quality;
3. Admissions decisions be made in a way that can make the most effective use of this financial aid budget to maintain an economically diverse student body while supporting Macalester’s mission of academic excellence with special emphasis on multiculturalism, internationalism, and service to society; and
4. Periodic admissions reports be made to the Macalester community by the Resources and Planning Committee and the Educational Policy and Governance Committee to support ongoing evaluation of what should be the proper level of this financial aid budget to accomplish Macalester’s overall goals.

RATIONALE: This proposal grows out of a report to the Board of Trustees by the Resources and Planning Committee. The RPC members who worked on this proposal over the past two years are: Faculty: Susan Fox, Diane Glancy, Martin Gunderson, Tom Halverson, Duchess Harris, Danny Kaplan, Martin Gunderson, Karl Wirth; Staff: Ron Joslin, Cedric McClure, Mary Claire Schultz; Students: Nate Abbott (’05), Edward Donkor (’04), Kristin Pollock (’07), Damien Rhudd (’04); Administrators (ex officio): Dan Balik, Dan Hornbach, David Wheaton.

1. Some colleges control their financial aid spending by admitting students in a “need-blind” fashion but then offering these students unacceptable financial aid packages. We find this method, known as “gapping” or “admit-deny,” hypocritical and impractical (it will lower our acceptance and retention rates).
2. Almost every school—even need blind schools—have financial aid budgets. Macalester does not. We propose to set our budget so that we admit a larger proportion of needy students than all of the elite need-blind liberal arts colleges.
3. Being need-blind without a budget cap means that we have no control over our financial aid spending. The current process works like this: we admit students, then calculate their financial aid; after we find out who has accepted, we see what our financial aid expense is, and whatever is left over we can use for everything else that we do at Macalester.
4. Even though most need-blind schools do have a budget, we do not believe that is logically consistent to be need-blind and have a specific budget. To get around the logical conflict schools engage in practices that we do not wish to apply to Macalester:
   1. Many need-blind schools engage in “legacy admissions” where they give substantial admissions preference to applicants whose parents are alumni. Since alumni of these institutions tend to have much higher income than the general public this can greatly increase the fraction of students that come from high-income families.
   2. The term “need-blind” has a very narrow, technical meaning in the world of admissions. It means that the admissions decision is made without looking at whether a student has applied for financial aid. However, it does not mean that the decision is made without looking at the applicant’s financial status (which can be approximated at through zip code, high school, parents occupation, etc.). Many schools preferentially admit students from high-income families and families who are expected to donate money to the school. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, 52% of families of Duke (need-blind) freshman made a contribution to the school in addition to paying full tuition and room and board. (At Macalester, for comparison, 25% of families of freshman pay full tuition, room and board.)
   3. Need-blind schools can practice “gapping” or “admit-deny” (see 1).
   4. Need-blind schools can market and brand themselves to be particularly appealing to high-income families.
5. Any plausible plan to stabilize or improve our financial situation will require both increased giving by the Macalester community and increased revenue from tuition.
6. We appreciate that an important part of Macalester’s character comes from the presence of large numbers of financially needy students, and it is for this reason that we set as a goal to keep the levels of financial aid above the other elite liberal arts colleges.
7. The College’s financial position has barely kept pace with inflation and has declined significantly over the past decade with respect to other colleges of high quality. Donations to Macalester—with one very large exception—have never matched those of our competition. Our endowment has fallen in value---both in real terms because investment performance has been slack as it has for all schools, and in relative terms because donations are not keeping up. Our tuition revenue is much lower than that of other schools. Partly this is because our tuition is relatively low; partly because it is because we have so many more students on financial aid than our competition.