Editorial: Colleges should prioritize need-based aid

Financial aid is often touted as a means to facilitate an otherwise unaffordable education…. Financial aid is often touted as a means to facilitate an otherwise unaffordable education. Recently, however, colleges have become less interested in assisting disadvantaged students and more in attracting top applicants, whether they’re low-income or not.

According to USA Today, universities will dispense $5.3 billion in non-need-based aid this year while need-based aid continues to decrease. Compounding the problem, families that earn up to $180,000 annually — well within the income bracket that sends students to college regardless of aid — will receive an additional $4 billion in federal tuition tax credits.

Many attribute the increase in merit-based aid to certain “discounts” that elite universities offer to desirable applicants (Harvard, Yale and Stanford, among others, waive tuition for families with incomes up to $130,000). Inevitably, less selective universities are following suit and, in doing so, disregarding poorer students. In fact, a recent National Center for Education Statistics report found that non-need-based institutional merit aid from both public and private colleges has now surpassed need-based institutional aid.

Naturally, we find this trend problematic. Rather than ensuring students can afford higher education, universities now use financial aid more as a recruiting tool — or, in the words of Richard Kahlenberg, a specialist in education at the Century Foundation, a “bribe.” As one debt-encumbered student complained to USA Today, “You don’t give the bloated guy the cheeseburger when the starving man is starving.”

We’re less concerned with federal tax credits — although we’d prefer the focus remain on poor applicants, we hardly think an $180,000 income renders higher education costs a non-issue. Even public-related universities like Pitt charge roughly $15,000 in tuition for in-state students, an amount that would strain nearly any household’s pocketbooks.

Indeed, as we noted in an October editorial, student financial woes are impossible to resolve without stabilizing tuition rates. While the government should maintain its commitment to aiding disadvantaged students, it should also threaten to cut funding for public universities that don’t keep their tuition in check, and increase their funding when they do. Politicians on various boards of trustees can apply pressure to ensure this.

Until the government actually addresses unsustainable tuition increases, however, universities should reconsider their funding priorities. Financial assistance is a valuable public service and should be treated as such by those who bestow it. Recruiting top students is important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of need-based aid.