Out From Behind the Ivy Wall

Financial aid officers said the system whichPrinceton is scrapping has been around fordecades, extending back to the days when the Iviesand other top schools collaborated in determiningfinancial aid.

This collaboration was originally done by theOverlap Group, a consortium of schools which hadmet since 1958 to make sure students admitted toseveral schools received fairly similar aidpackages from each.

This consultation was ended by a JusticeDepartment investigation in 1991 spurred bycharges of price-fixing. Still, until last monthformer group members had offered most applicantsvery similar aid packages.

"We kind of got out of step," Betterton says ofPrinceton's changes, made at a time when mostIvies are holding steady to their current systemof determining student need.

Some, like Brown University, have even begunadmitting in recent years that a student's abilityto pay full price may influence admissionsdecisions in certain cases.

Still, some say that even those Ivies with themoney to follow Princeton's lead should stay theircourse to preserve the value of their educations.

"If the Ivies were to make their educationcheaper across-the-board, they would have tosacrifice their ability to be highly selective andoffer very high quality," writes Kahn AssociateProfessor of Economics Caroline M. Hoxby '88 in ane-mail.

"The education they provide would be worth less(in fact, they might become a lot more like someof the schools that struggle to become more likethe Ivies)," adds Hoxby, whose research hasfocused on the economics of higher education.

At Harvard, Director of Financial Aid James S.Miller declined to comment. President Neil L.Rudenstine said that the University intended tostudy Princeton's new policy before making anychanges.

"If we make a move, we want it to be sensible,healthy and constructive, and we want it to besomething we can live with for a long time,"Rudenstine says.

Rudenstine says that, as an undergraduate, heundertook loans and work-study as part of afinancial aid package and had a greaterappreciation for his education as a result.

"I felt it was important to be investingsomewhat in my own education," Rudenstine says. "Ifelt that having a job and borrowing some moneywas something that I could and should bear."

Princeton spokesperson Justin Harmon told theChronicle of Higher Education thatPrinceton meant to say to lower-or middle-incomestudents "If you're thinking about going to astate university, think again."

At Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey,Vice President for University Budget Nancy S.Winterbauer says that scholarships make tuitionvirtually free for high-achieving New Jerseystudents.