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                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 62

Bye-Bye Financial Aid


    For private colleges, few costs rose more quickly during the
1980s than dollars allotted for financial aid. But having a
racially and economically diverse student body seemed worth
almost any price. Now the economic realities of the '90s are
forcing college administrators to make painful decisions about
their commitment to students who may not be able to pay their
own way. "Need-blind" admissions -- the high-minded practice of
accepting qualified students regardless of their financial
status -- is "close to a religion" at many schools, says Henry
Rosovsky, economics professor at Harvard University. "But there
can be no sacred cows in the current period."

    Some elite institutions have already offered up that cow
for sacrifice. Two years ago, Smith College, which spends $13.7
million a year on financial aid, announced that it could no
longer afford a need-blind admissions policy. As a result, 29
otherwise qualified candidates for last fall's freshman class --
11 of them women of color -- were rejected. Under pressure from
students and alumnae, Smith resumed its need-blind policy this
year, but the result is likely to be the same. While those 29
students would probably be admitted now, Smith still wouldn't be
able to give them any money.

    Wesleyan University, which overshot its financial-aid
budget by $850,000 last year, is considering a proposal to make
a student's ability to pay one of the major factors in
determining who is accepted from the school's waiting list.
Meanwhile, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., despite a
professed commitment to admitting students without regard to
financial need, rejected 40 otherwise qualified applicants last
year when it ran out of aid money. "Letting financial conditions
affect who gets in is not an attractive option for us," laments
admissions dean Richard Steele. "But we're not assuming that we
can be totally need-blind as we approach the 21st century."

    Admissions officials say that unless the government
provides more financial support, growing numbers of youngsters,
particularly in the middle class, may not be able to attend the
schools of their choice. "Low-income students get fully funded,
and high-income students pay full freight, but it's the middle
class that really has a hard time," says Rosovsky. Increasingly,
institutions are divvying up their limited funds into skimpy
partial-aid packages rather than full grants -- a practice known
as gapping. This leads students to overextend themselves by
taking on unadvisably large loans or excessively demanding jobs.
Both Reed College in Portland, Ore., and Amherst College in
Massachusetts, for example, will ask their financial-aid
students to kick in about $500 more than last year, either from
loans or campus employment.

    Though they don't like to admit it, many colleges are
actively pursuing wealthy students by intensifying their
recruitment of affluent foreign students. International students
made up 11% of the entering class at the University of
Pennsylvania last fall, compared with just 2% a decade ago.
About 45% of the students at Penn receive financial aid, but
only 8% of the foreign students do.

    While international recruiting and continued support for
indigent students will help colleges maintain their ethnic and
racial diversity, another kind of diversity is likely to be
sacrificed as private colleges feel the squeeze. Without the
middle and working classes, says J. Carey Thompson, admissions
director at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., "it's the
economic diversity that will suffer."

     -- By Janice C. Simpson