Letters to the Editor

Senator Grassley's interference with university endowments begins the great horror of a free democratic republic: social engineering, the redistribution of personal wealth, and the destruction of capitalism. Private property is exactly that – not government property.

Americans should revolt against this.

Anne Marie Erskine
Avondale, Pa.

Colleges are filling the gaps left by Government

Regarding your recent editorial on college costs: Thank you for realizing that affordability and access is a much bigger question than the size of college endowments. The most recent cry from legislators about college wealth and a move to mandate endowment spending is based on a basic misunderstanding of the way endowments – and colleges – work.

Only a tiny percentage of schools have endowments of the size of the wealthiest cited. I agree that some of those sitting on billion-dollar-plus troves should explain why they charge the highest tuitions in the nation and spend less than 5 percent of their endowments – but in reality, there would not be much impact if they all began to spend 5 percent.

Most colleges struggle daily to hold the line on costs while providing a high-quality, personalized (and expensive) education. Being highly tuition dependent, like most of the smaller independent colleges in the Uniteed States, Albright's endowment provides only a small percentage of our operating revenues.

Institutional aid cuts the average "sticker price" tuition bill dramatically (at Albright, almost in half). In fact, we do draw down about 5 percent of our endowment every year – but five percent of a $50 million endowment is a far cry from 5 percent of a billion.

Colleges like Albright have been doing their part to increase access and affordability by dramatically discounting their tuitions in the form of "grants" to replace dollars that once were provided by state and federal governments. But the bigger problem with college costs is a precipitous decline in our government's historic investment in higher education. Since 1980, the ratio of federally subsidized loans to outright grants has shifted from 20:80 to 80:20. The predictable result is a dramatic increase in colleges providing "grants" that are "funded" by tuition discounting, and the correspondingly dramatic rise in graduates' debt load.

Given that a bachelor's degree is becoming an indispensable credential for success in our increasingly global economy, the public should be asking why we as a nation are not providing funding for capable young people who simply don't have the family resources to afford college.

This is the real issue that legislators need to address.

Lex O. McMillan III
President,
Reading, Pa.

Albright College

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