Don't worry- it's on us!

"Princeton has sort of upped the ante in this arms race, so that it may not be long before all students will be able to go without respect to the loan competition," says James Bock, acting dean of admission at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. "Will everyone try to follow? It's a big question for the schools at this tier and everyone down the food chain."

In fact, various institutions have responded in different ways since the 1998 shift. Marlboro College in Vermont lowered its tuition by 8 percent. Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, quietly replaced thousands in loans with grants for dozens of students it was anxious to enroll. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology cut by $1,000 the amount students receiving aid had to contribute. Last year, Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., froze tuition, room, and board, eschewing the ritual annual increase.

All this indicates that the laws of economics are still in full play, despite floods of applications at some schools, says Kalman Chany, president, of New York-based Campus Consultants, and author of "Paying for College Without Going Broke."

"What Princeton did simply meant they weren't getting the students they wanted to get," he says. "A lot of parents were questioning whether they wanted to go to Princeton at that price. Some were saying it was just too much."

Princeton officials deny its recent move is to gain an edge. "We want to ensure that no student admitted to Princeton feels that he or she cannot attend because it would present a financial hardship," Princeton President Harold Shapiro said in a statement recently. "We have made all of today's improvement with that goal in mind."

But others are less certain about the long-term impact and moral and philosophical underpinnings of the move.

"When Princeton does something like that, it becomes a ripple through the industry," says Barry McCarty, dean of enrollment services at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. "My concern is what is going to happen to students - some of whom will obviously be very happy. Others will be losers. Not at Princeton, but at places where financial aid has to compete in a rather fierce way with other needs of the institution - technology, library services, energy, to say nothing of capital needs."

Michael McPherson, president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., an economist and co-author of "The Student Aid Game," agrees the recent change benefits Princeton students financially.

"But is that the best thing you could do with that endowment money?" he wonders. "It's a genuine dilemma. Many of these students would willingly pay much more than they are being asked to pay now. It's like saying: 'Welcome to Princeton or Harvard. You are being provided access to the best education that American society has to offer - and, oh, by the way, here's a hot fudge sundae, too.'"

Dr. McPherson is not alone in wondering about such things - or questioning the nation's decade-long slide away from "need-based" aid that helps low-income students. The trend has been strongly toward more merit aid - which can be applied to students who do not need aid, while those that do need it go without.

To Ms. Wills, the Princeton student, the practical effect is positive. "This will help relieve pressures [a lot of students] feel to go into certain majors so they can pay off loans," she says. "I know people who go into consulting and investment banking because those are lucrative careers that can pay off debts."

If this spreads, she adds, it will mean fewer students who feel compelled to attend another school simply because the aid offer was better. While it will affect only her final year of school - cutting about $4,000 from her accumulated loans - she thinks it's the right thing morally.

"I chose Princeton over Swarthmore, even though Swarthmore had a better aid offer," she says. "But I know people who had that same decision and chose the school they didn't like as much for financial reasons. It's good that other universities will be forced to step up to the plate."

E-mail claytonm@csps.com

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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