class is in
June 9, 2009 5:20 PM   Subscribe

Reed has cast aside its hopes of soon accepting students based purely on merit, without regard to wealth. "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."
posted by plexi (43 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Did Reed ever have a need-blind admissions policy? I believe not. A blanket need-blind policy has always been something that only the billionaire institutions could afford, sadly.
posted by RogerB at 5:24 PM on June 9, 2009


Did Reed ever have a need-blind admissions policy? I believe not. A blanket need-blind policy has always been something that only the billionaire institutions could afford, sadly.

Yep-- when most private institutions boast that they guarantee to cover the full need of every student admitted...that means that they're not admitting students whose need exceeds the resources available.
posted by availablelight at 5:29 PM on June 9, 2009


It's highly relevant, in some way that I don't entirely understand, that the article mentions Steve Jobs as a graduate but not Gary Snyder.
posted by crazylegs at 5:31 PM on June 9, 2009 [4 favorites]


The annual fees for tuition, room, and board are nearly $50,000. Of course they need to get money in the door.
posted by Pants! at 5:35 PM on June 9, 2009


I just got back from my Reed Reunion; funny this story only came out after the reunion ended. Reed's just starting a giant fundraising campaign for its 100th birthday. It's also acquired a lot of land and built a lot of new dorms in the past 10 years. All good investments, in my mind, but not cheap. And Reed has always had a shockingly small endowment for a school of its caliber.

$50,000 a year for college just seems untenable. And Reed is by not unusually expensive compared to its peers. I'm very grateful to the college and what it did for me. But it's hard to understand what the end-game is when small liberal arts colleges all cost over $200,000 to get a four year education.
posted by Nelson at 5:37 PM on June 9, 2009 [2 favorites]


$50,000

Reed's tuition and fees (~$38K) surpasses the big name Ivy League schools. Just a data point.
posted by JohnFredra at 5:41 PM on June 9, 2009


Reed is a good school. Like others, it has money problems and unlike some elite places, not a great endowment. There are plenty of bright students with money (family) so take them and let other good school take students based on need. Let's get up front: schools pay out in one or another way for athletes, oboe players etc. Students want to go to Reed, let them pay to go there. Plenty of other schools for those who can not afford it. We live in a democracy and money
still central to our lives. If the school is to survive, this is a way to do it. For bright kids without?
Hey, there are state schools that are great, less expensive, and give lots of student aid.
Note: I have no connection to Reed.
posted by Postroad at 5:44 PM on June 9, 2009


Why does this discussion always begin with this Claude Rains-like feigned shock at the nominal full sticker price? At Reed like any of its peer institutions fewer than half the students are paying that price. The silver lining of non-need-blind admissions is that admitted students can be guaranteed financial aid packages that (in FA office lingo and usually also in reality) meet their full financial need and leave college relatively affordable – of course, discounting loans, the relative amount or absence of which is one of the biggest differences between private institutions these days.
posted by RogerB at 5:45 PM on June 9, 2009 [1 favorite]


I'm a financial aid administrator at a state school. COA for a full-time undergrad is $16,776.00 for 09-10. I gave a presentation last night to some incoming freshmen. I told them that the ultimate purpose of my life was to help them to pay for college.

They didn't listen to my presentation.

Roughly half of the freshman arriving at our institution in the Fall will depart in the Spring with some new debt and no higher education.
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 5:46 PM on June 9, 2009 [5 favorites]


This is unfortunate, and of course unwelcome news to everyone involved, but hardly surprising. The Doyle Owl demands sacrifice.
posted by darth_tedious at 5:53 PM on June 9, 2009


Interesting story, battleshipkropotkin, but it has very little to do with Reed or their admissions policy.
posted by grouse at 5:53 PM on June 9, 2009


Reminds me of the countless suburbs that spend all their money expanding their infrastructure so that they can have more development so that they can have more taxes so that they can have more money to spend.

Sooner or later they wonder why they're broke. But the Councilmembers all have nice houses and new pools.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:09 PM on June 9, 2009 [1 favorite]


Why does this discussion always begin with this Claude Rains-like feigned shock at the nominal full sticker price?

I am shocked, shocked, that you would imply that I am shocked, shocked!

I do wonder though -- isn't the sticker price a bit of a shell game? The wealthy families can subsidize the less-wealthy, and the 'financial aid' from the endowments can then easily be funneled right back into the school's operating budget. So the sticker price is really just a rate-limiter for how many wealthy kids you want to admit based on whatever admittance rate you want to maintain. Am I reading that right?
posted by JohnFredra at 6:24 PM on June 9, 2009


I think $50K is worth it considering they have their own nuclear reactor!
posted by vespabelle at 6:49 PM on June 9, 2009


I find it admirable that they haven't resorted to laying staff off, although it is sad to hear that so many "brain" qualified students have been turned down because they don't come from wealthy families.

I went to Reed in undergrad. I certainly had a love/hate relationship with the place, but it undoubtedly changed my life, the way I think, and how I interact with the world.

I probably would have been one of the students who got the ax this admission season. I received a great deal of financial aid. How different I would have been had I not gone to Reed!

As I get older, I am amazed by how such seemingly arbitrary decisions—made by others, or ourselves—add up to changed lives. Not saying our lives follow a teleological trajectory, just that it is interesting that someone in a chair, in an office, can change the course of a life with a yes or no. I guess it is the same in many industries—winning government contracts, getting that new job, getting published, etc.

Good luck to the new incoming class! Just cause mom and dad's money helped get some of them in, doesn't mean their four years are going to be easy. I don't think Reed has changed enough that students can skate through their qualifying exams and thesis...
posted by whimsicalnymph at 6:53 PM on June 9, 2009


vespabelle: "

I think $50K is worth it considering they have their own nuclear reactor!
"

Which is different than state schools how?
posted by pwnguin at 7:00 PM on June 9, 2009


As a graduate of a private college comparable to Reed, I just don't understand how the second-tier institutions (i.e., non-Ivies, non-Stanfords) can stay in business, even before the US economy went down the shitter. I certainly value my education, but if it comes time for my own kids to pick a college I can't imagine paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a BA when there are so many excellent public universities out there (like the one where I went to graduate school).

Then again, back in the mid-90's when I was in college, people were asking the same questions. I haven't heard of many private colleges folding, so who knows.

Looking back, if I could have gone to a state school instead and then traveled around the world for three years, that might have been a better deal.
posted by bardic at 7:03 PM on June 9, 2009


Steve Jobs isn't a graduate of Reed, is he? My understanding was that he dropped out because it was a ridiculous amount of money to spend on tuition and he felt like he was wasting his adoptive parents's money...
posted by anniecat at 7:16 PM on June 9, 2009


A personal anecdote for anyone considering state vs. private schools... I got into Macalester in 2003 which is as comparably prestigious and flaky (Kofi Annan is a graduate) as Reed and couldn't afford to go for the same reason... Wound up at the state school, U of MN, did just fine and am debt free.* Aside from losing a little hipster academic street cred., I don't regret the decision.

* YMMV.
posted by ShadePlant at 7:19 PM on June 9, 2009


Why does this discussion always begin with this Claude Rains-like feigned shock at the nominal full sticker price?

Claude Rains? I don't see any Claude Rains.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:54 PM on June 9, 2009


It's highly relevant, in some way that I don't entirely understand, that the article mentions Steve Jobs as a graduate but not Doctor Demento.

Fixed.

Reed '86 here. Got huge financial aid from the place and had to graduate in 4 years, because they wouldn't fund me for more than that.

I have a lot more to say about this but won't be able to stop once I've started. Not happy.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 8:50 PM on June 9, 2009


I think that Reed is coming in for criticism here because they have been outspoken and honest about the implications of the financial crisis, while most colleges have been all "lah lah we value our mission lah lah" while making changes (eg layoffs, increased entering classes, need sensitive admissions) quietly.

Reed does a lot of things very well, but is in a really difficult position because they a) have very little money compared to many peer institutions and b) make ethical issues a big part of their public image. That puts them in a position to be criticized, while doing better than many other places who escape criticism through deceptive language and obfuscation.
posted by Forktine at 9:22 PM on June 9, 2009


I can't imagine paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a BA when there are so many excellent public universities out there

Most families don't.

I went to a similar small liberal arts school that, at the time, had really great financial aid and need-blind admissions. When I tell people from the area where I went to school, they assume I'm rich, but the average family income at my school was lower than that of the state university. It was actually cheaper for me to go there than my state university.

To be honest, it's hard for me to imagine there are many families out there who can pay for a full four years at one of these schools. You have to be pretty wealthy. This is why it's sad to see stuff like this happening. I know schools have to do what they can to stay afloat, but the more they do away with need-blind admissions, the more these colleges become finishing schools for the children of the creative class.
posted by lunasol at 10:06 PM on June 9, 2009


Gary who?
posted by Evilspork at 10:50 PM on June 9, 2009


'91 flameout here..

Reed has priced out thousands of perfectly acceptable students whose out of pocket + financial aid doesn't even come close; what's another few more?
posted by fleacircus at 3:26 AM on June 10, 2009


$50,000 a year for college just seems untenable.

I really, truly hope you mean untenable for the student, and not untenable for the school. Because... shit, man! Fifty thousand dollars a year for a college in Oregon?! That's fucking crazy. Like, having-sex-with-trees kind of fucking crazy. Even if the average student gets $10,000 in aid, that's still an assload of money.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:13 AM on June 10, 2009


At Reed like any of its peer institutions fewer than half the students are paying that price.

But why is anyone paying that price? Why has college tuition consistently outstripped inflation for decades?

If someone can make a cogent case for the actual cost run up, I would v. happy to hear it. (My own and Mrs Jones' alma maters point with pride to shiny new student centers - two reasons we don't toss them money.)
posted by IndigoJones at 6:14 AM on June 10, 2009


But why is anyone paying that price? Why has college tuition consistently outstripped inflation for decades?

Because they can. As long as the masses believe that a high-quality education is the only way for their children to succeed, they will pay. Demand has been kept artificially high as an article of 'faith' for so long, is it surprising that prices have kept pace?
posted by pointless_incessant_barking at 6:45 AM on June 10, 2009


Richard Levin, Yale's president, explained it this way in the Wall Street Journal this week:
Tuition is always a big issue. Earlier this year, smack in the midst of the recession, Yale raised it 3.2% to $47,500, including room and board. Mr. Levin is unapologetic. "If we are to maintain a 10-to-one ratio of students to faculty, if professors get average salary increases, we're going to go up faster than inflation" -- during his tenure, on average, a percentage point above inflation.
posted by AwkwardPause at 7:11 AM on June 10, 2009


Weird. Reed students can be outrageously frank and cruel. Um..

...Metafilter is the Reed of weblogs. And we paid 5 whole dollars for it, too!
posted by Monstrous Moonshine at 8:00 AM on June 10, 2009


I think that Reed is coming in for criticism here because they have been outspoken and honest about the implications of the financial crisis

Oh definitely. The NYT article is full of quotes and notes from interviews with Reed people, including the president Colin Diver. They're clearly trying to get this message out in public. I don't know why, other than it is true and the world benefits from some public disclosure of this kind of problem.

I greatly treasure my small liberal arts experience at Reed. Not that you can't get an excellent education at a public university, not at all, but the tiny community at Reed was just right for me. I was only able to go to Reed with extensive financial aid and I've tried to repay the favour over the years with donations. But $50,000 a year is a crushing expense for normal people. I'm struck by Bardic's comment that four years of a less expensive school + three years of world travel might be a better education for the money.
posted by Nelson at 8:10 AM on June 10, 2009


Students want to go to Reed, let them pay to go there. Plenty of other schools for those who can not afford it.
Also, they could eat cake.
posted by steambadger at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2009


IndigoJones: But why is anyone paying that price? Why has college tuition consistently outstripped inflation for decades?

pointless_incessant_barking: Because they can. As long as the masses believe that a high-quality education is the only way for their children to succeed, they will pay.


Pretty much. I know many upper/middle-class students who can't afford a $200,000 education and don't qualify for much financial aid, but decide to go deep into dept to pay it anyway. A lot of them don't even plan on trying for a well-paying career (or they assume it'll be easy to find one) and/or want to go on to more expensive grad school.

It's foolish, but they're pretty much taught that a name-brand education is the goal and that going to public, state, or any less-prestigious school is a waste of their hard work and won't get them nearly as good of an education. To comment on what pointless_incessant_barking is saying, they're told that there's no high-quality education to be found below a certain USNews ranking. Many also think that they can only find their 'one true niche' at a certain school, which is where they belong.

Just check out the collegeconfidential.com forum to see what I'm talking about.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:39 AM on June 10, 2009


Solon, the funny thing about Reed is it's not really a name brand. There are many better known, more prestigious schools that have roughly the same educational quality and much better recognition. For a long time Reed wasn't even ranked properly by US News and World Report: they explicitly opted out of the rankings. The college tends to attract people who pay the $50,000 because they believe it's the best education for them, not just people looking for an expensive credential on a resume.
posted by Nelson at 10:08 AM on June 10, 2009


Why has college tuition consistently outstripped inflation for decades?

This is, of course, a complicated question, and the answers may vary a lot between institutions and types of institution. But there's one short answer, at least about labor costs (so leaving aside new construction, etc.): the money isn't going to instruction. In fact the concomitant trend is to casualize faculty labor, replacing full-time tenure-track jobs with sub-poverty-level adjunct piecework. The run-up in spending has been spent doubling administrative and support staff (NYT article) at many schools. A steadily swelling class of administrators is soaking up a larger and larger proportion of college and university budgets.

More detail here: report on the higher education labor force from the Center for College Affordability
posted by RogerB at 10:14 AM on June 10, 2009 [2 favorites]


If someone can make a cogent case for the actual cost run up, I would v. happy to hear it.

I've thought about this a lot, as a graduate of a small liberal arts college that decided to raise its tuition by about $8,000/year in the four years that I attended (in the process totally wiping out the value of my scholarship). The college I attended was very frank in admitting that while they were consistently ranked a "best value" college in all those silly college ranking guides, being a labeled a good value school was actually a detriment--because it somehow implied that the quality of the education was lower than one would get at a pricier college. They didn't want to be seen as the higher-ed equivalent of store-brand beans, basically. So they raised tuition and fees by something on the order of 30-40% in a very short time frame to have the total sticker price of an education be similar to their "peer institutions." (I think they were only so honest about what was driving the decision because the school had an endowment of over a billion dollars, and so any explanation that pointed to higher costs or the need to spruce up facilities would have fallen pretty flat.)

At least part of what's driving the fast increase in college tuition--one of the only things that is inflating faster than medical costs, which is no mean feat--is that there are very few reliable quality signals out there for potential students to rely on when comparing schools. (Fewer than there are for medical care, which again--impressive in a depressing way.) Even 10-15 years ago, four years of college tuition was not an insignificant investment, and so colleges have strived to convince parents (and to a lesser extent students) that this particular school will pay off, will be worth that huge cost. But how do you measure the value of a school? It's all well and good to say that a liberal arts degree is invaluable, but when comparing one school to another, how do you know whether a Reed degree is somehow "worth" more than a Macalaster degree? If you're an Ivy, you rely on your name, but if you're one of the high-quality liberal arts schools that has little name recognition in wider culture, you basically have to signal your quality to potential students in different ways. Two of the biggies are (1) really, really, really nice facilities that will impress families that tour your campus, and (2) sticker shock. By putting a high price on your product--even if you expect that less than half of the students will actually pay that price--you indicate that the intrinsic value of this education is quite high.

The end result is pretty nasty, though, because as we've seen colleges end up in this totally counterproductive arms race of nicer and nicer facilities (which I'm sure students appreciate, but don't necessarily enhance actual education much) and higher and higher tuition bills to keep up with the Jones (or the Oberlins, I suppose). It's pretty much a never-ending cycle, because you don't want to be the "cheapest" school, so you have to raise your prices just as much as everyone else does. What really needs to happen is for an external organization (whether that's the federal government or the acceditation agencies) to step in and force an end to it, because any college that acts unilaterally (by walking away from the race) is scared that it will only get screwed by opting out.
posted by iminurmefi at 10:16 AM on June 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Solon, the funny thing about Reed is it's not really a name brand.

It certainly is amoung a certain demographic.

I'm not saying it's worthless to go to a prestigious/highly-ranked school, it's great if you can afford it. But it's a shame students buy into the idea that they need to go to X school to get a good education, even if it'll cost them more money than they can afford and put them into horrible debt for years.

It's their choice to make, obviously, but it's a shame that there's so much hype reenforcing ideas that simply aren't true.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 10:21 AM on June 10, 2009


It certainly is amoung a certain demographic.

I'll clarify: Reed is well-regarded by those who know about it because it provides a good education. I don't mean to imply people go there to pad a resume.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 10:32 AM on June 10, 2009


One issue that RogerB's comment about labor costs reminded me of that's rather specific to Reed - no graduate school means no graduate students teaching undergrad classes for free. All instruction at Reed is by full faculty members, and they are all paid accordingly. That's got to bump up the per student instruction cost, and I'm sure is part of the reason why tuition is now more than many Ivy League schools that have graduate programs.
posted by cRamsay at 4:12 PM on June 10, 2009


"Solon, the funny thing about Reed is it's not really a name brand."

All graduates of strong, second-tier private colleges (speaking as one) tend to over-value the name-recognition and significance of their brand. Yes, Reed is a very good school. No, most people have never heard of it, including potential employers. Especially if you move away from Oregon (or in my case, Ohio).

Learned this last piece of news the hard way.
posted by bardic at 5:21 PM on June 10, 2009


hi celeste!
posted by gleuschk at 6:59 PM on June 10, 2009 [1 favorite]


Alumni got the following email yesterday from the office of the President of Reed, subject line "In response to the June 10 article in the New York Times."
June 11, 2009

Re: Reed College financial aid policies

Dear alumni:

I am writing to provide some additional information and context for the discussion of Reed College's financial aid policies contained in a June 10, 2009, article in the New York Times. The article was based on extensive research and interviews and open access to Reed's budgetary decision-making process and used Reed College as a case study to explore how American private educational institutions are coping with the economic downturn.

Some who have read the story were left with the impression that Reed has changed its financial aid policies or awarded less grant support to prospective and continuing students for the coming year. In fact, the opposite is true. Reed increased its financial aid budget by 7.8 percent for next year; we were able to offer aid to 14 percent more applicants for next year's incoming class compared to last year. For continuing students, we have increased financial aid awards as necessary to meet any adverse changes in their families' economic circumstances.

Reed's financial aid policy has been, and continues to be, based on three firmly held principles:

1. We award financial aid solely on the basis of financial need. Unlike many of our peers, we do not award "merit aid."
2. We meet 100 percent of the demonstrated financial aid need for all admitted students. Unlike many of our peers, we do not practice "gapping" (i.e., awarding less than 100 percent of need as a way to stretch financial aid dollars).
3. We guarantee that we will meet 100 percent of the demonstrated financial aid need of all continuing students by re-evaluating financial aid packages on an annual basis.

There is a fourth principle that we aspire to achieve, namely, to be fully need-blind. Ideally, the ability to pay should never enter into a decision of whether to admit a particular student. In recent years we have come quite close to attaining this ideal. The vast majority of applicants are admitted without consideration of family resources. But, compared to a handful of truly need-blind colleges and universities, we have had to put a limit on the number of students we could admit on a truly need-blind basis. The troubling news about the current recession--and the central message of the Times article--is that demand for financial aid has increased this year even faster than our sizable increase in the financial aid budget.

This does not mean that Reed is ungenerous in providing financial aid. Indeed, the case is quite to the contrary. Over the past 10 years, our financial aid budget has more than doubled. In the upcoming academic year, we expect that 51 percent of Reed students will receive financial aid, with the average annual grant awarded being $32,630. Of this amount, more than $30,000 comes directly from Reed's endowment and operating budget, with the remainder coming from state, federal, and other private sources. The percentage provided by these external sources has steadily diminished over time.

Nor does this mean that Reed has had to make compromises in the quality of its educational program. The college continues to attract a student body of uncommon intellectual passion and talent, and it maintains the academic rigor and intensity for which it is justly famous.

The recession has set us back in our longstanding aspiration to become fully need-blind. But it is, we hope, only a temporary setback. With the generous support of loyal alumni and friends and the momentum of the recently announced $200 million centennial campaign, we intend to redouble our efforts to build the endowment to the point of never again having to make the painful choices forced upon us by the current recession.

Sincerely,

Colin S. Diver
President
posted by gleuschk at 6:08 AM on June 12, 2009


Demand has been kept artificially high as an article of 'faith' for so long, is it surprising that prices have kept pace?

Well, yeah, sure, but it seems to have gotten a whole lot worse in past two decades. (Don't have statistics, only impressions.) Matching inflation is one thing, beating it quite so handily quite another.

Here's a thought for comment - I remember Clinton being vocal on how everyone should go to college, and I seem to recall that he made good this nonsensical thought by making student loans a lot easier to get.

Easy money = higher prices. Like with houses. Also brings its own kind of heartbreak.

Or did I miss something?

(PS- thank you others for the more thoughtful expansive answers. Truly, much appreciated.)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:04 PM on June 12, 2009 [1 favorite]


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