Ask And You Shall Receive

Last week, I asked whether there were any colleges with unique strategies for controlling tuition and aiding students, but without the help of a gigantic endowment. Lo and behold, Inside HigherEd reports on Blackburn College, a small, private college in Illinois (chances are this school is off the NYT’s radar), that is trying to do something different with tuition and financial aid.

Blackburn College announced that it is both lowering tuition and getting out of the tuition haggling game. Basically, it’s lowering its sticker price by 15 percent but also going with a CarMax-type policy of not bargaining with parents over financial aid packages. A big plus to this new policy is that parents and students know the true cost of Blackburn, even before they apply. And this combination of lower tuition and lower spending on financial aid means that the school won’t be losing any tuition revenue, so the bottom line for the institution stays the same. But what about the bottom line for students?

Blackburn believes that the tuition--$15,000 with room and board—is affordable for low-income students, so long as the students get federal and state aid. If a student received a full Pell-grant and the full amount of Illinois’ need-based grant program the out-of-pocket cost for Blackburn would be approximately $6,000. Not bad, although that still means potentially graduating with over $20,000 in debt. And loans, while they are grouped with grants as part of an aid ‘package’, need to be paid back and aren’t nearly as good at facilitating access to college (CarMax doesn’t say it offers financial aid to buy a car). But loans are an excellent way to facilitate choice—students can opt for a private college instead of a public one, or a four-year instead of a two-year. But how can we know how much debt is too much debt?

The larger problem with financial aid policy is that there is no consensus over what the ‘right’ amount of debt for students is, or how much people should be expected to contribute to their own education. We need a goal—some strategic planning, if you will—for our financial aid system. Is the goal to help low-income students attend any college they like? To help them attend a public, four-year? A two-year? Or to facilitate choice in colleges among everyone, even those that are from upper-income families?

Until we answer these questions, our financial aid policies will always feel like a shot in the dark