When I attended Reed (Old Reed™ days of course) the school advertised that about 50% of the students received financial aid. I being one of them. Having some idea of how the financial aid formulas worked, what amazed me was that this meant that the other half of the students’ parents had an extra $30,000+ just lying around each year.
Well now it’s an extra $50,000 just lying around. And according to the New York Times, 100 students this year who would have otherwise been accepted just don’t have rich enough parents.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable.
Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the school did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight.
I’d think Reed, with a $357 million endowment, and owning a big chunk of Eastmoreland, could scrounge up a few more dollars for the middle class and poor kids. I guess not.
Read the rest: A Small College Struggles With Economics
Hey, a NYT story that isn’t about bike commuting and urban chickens? Amazing.
Patrick – No food carts either. Weird!
Reed doesn’t care so much about having top-notch students anymore? What a crime.
runleonarun – Yeah, it’s a bummer. Personally I think they should dip into their endowment more during the recession, and then build it up again after.
Also – I didn’t know you were blogging! Cool. Panther Creek: Heather and I camped there last year; hope you saw the falls!
To Patrick: urban chickens are quite possibly the greatest thing going, and surely our last line of hope. There can never be too many news items about them, songs about them, religions founded on them, etc.
Reed is indeed very expensive. I learned everything I currently know about the typical body hair patterns of modern-day homo sapiens hippies (which still isn’t much, really), and even that little learning, a dangerous thing to be sure, came only with substantial help from the financial aid office.
I don’t know how Reed can be sustained. I’m pretty sure it should be, but I don’ t know how.
But back to the chickens …
I
That trailing “I” in my previous comment is less poignant than accidental. Proper typing is for suckers.
I definitely know that some people don’t have the money
“just lying around”
but save up for it.
just saying
Well, “just lying around” in the form of “borrowed against home equity.” I guess we can say the home is just lying there.