“Any person, any study?” Not so fast. The University that lays claim to being the people’s Ivy is also the stingiest.
Cornell is less generous on financial aid than most of its peers, and hasn’t even tried to match a spate of aid increases at other schools.
42 top universities have made financial aid for the poorest families loan-free. Seven of them have done so for all students. Meanwhile, among its peers, Cornell dispenses the lowest amount of financial aid in grants and the highest in loans. Most alarmingly, only 5.6 percent of the $4 billion capital campaign is slated for undergraduate financial aid — the lowest among the Ivy capital campaigns.
It is time for Cornell to decide which 19th century character to model itself after: Ezra Cornell or Uriah Heep. The image of the poor student may have been romantic when tuition was still low enough that students could actually pay for college with their work-study jobs alone. But the current financial aid system relies heavily on loans. Students on financial aid often remain in debt many years after they graduate. This leaves the best and the brightest yoked into safe, lucrative corporate jobs instead of becoming the kinds of social, political and business entrepreneurs that would put Cornell on the map and fulfill its pretensions to being a world-class university with a real-world impact.
Cornell should commit to no-loan financial aid for more low-income students, and institute a University-wide program of loan assistance to graduates pursuing public service careers.
It’s true that for Cornell, matching other schools’ financial packages would be an uphill battle. Cornell has far more students than many of its peers, and thus a far-lower endowment-per-student rate. And Cornell has an admirable tradition of admitting a larger cohort of low-income students than many other schools.
For some observers, Cornell is simply too large to tackle the problem: that’s just the way the Ivory Tower crumbles.
But here in Ithaca, an uphill battle is something we know a little bit about. As long as there is one student crippled by loans, one parent struggling to pay tuition, one instance of hardship, Cornellians cannot sit idly by.
President David Skorton must make a public, full-throated commitment to tackling the financial aid issue any way he can. It may well not be in Cornell’s grasp to match other schools, be they richer or smaller. But it isn’t Cornellian to hide behind professed humility, to refuse to confront the crucial questions of our time, to stand by the wayside and throw up hands when the going becomes rough.
When it comes to financial aid, Cornell must, simply, try harder — for the welfare of its students and for the survival of its public mission. Until it does, the capital campaign — dubbed “Far Above…” — might as well be called “Far Below.”