NYU: Make College Affordable for Low-Income Students
- by: Susan V
- recipient: New York University
According to Dictionary.com, “American society operates on the principle that an individual's achievements can be rewarded by upward social mobility.” So why are America’s wealthiest colleges making it so hard for poor students to move upward?
Using data compiled by the Obama administration, posted on College Scorecard, ProPublica has created an interactive database, Debt by Degrees, that details “the financial burden that the poorest college students face compared to their wealthier peers.”
Based on that data, ProPublica found that some of America’s wealthiest colleges are the least helpful to low income students, leaving them saddled with loan debt exceeding $20,000.
New York University, for example, has a hefty $3.5 billion endowment and invests $billions in SoHo real estate, and yet students whose families make less than $30,000 graduate from NYU with an average loan debt of over $23,000.
The impact of this heavy debt is far-reaching, says ProPublica, putting young graduates “at a disadvantage for years" and limiting their ability to save or buy a home.
By comparison, Vassar College, with an endowment less than a third of NYU, “charges its poorest students a quarter of what NYU does, and they graduate with less than half the debt, says ProPublica. The same is also true for some larger colleges with a per-student endowment much lower that NYU's.
Sign this petiton to ask that NYU make college more affordable for low-income students.
We, the undersigned, believe America’s wealthiest colleges have an obligation to make higher education more affordable for low-income students.
The irony of lower-income students being burdened by such heavy debt after graduation, is that the debt defeats one of the primary purposes of earning the degree in the first place, to move upward, economically, in society.
ProPublica’s explanation of how Vassar made a turnaround in its policies on helping poorer students should serve as an example to NYU. In 2006 Vassar hired Catherine Bond Hill as its new president, and during her first years she instituted policies that accepted “students regardless of their financial background,” and replaced “loans with grants to poorer students.” Then she aggressively recruited applicants from poorer neighborhoods. “After 10 years, adds ProPublica, Vassar became “one of the most affordable colleges in the country for low-income students.”
Even though Vassar, a much smaller college than NYU, has a high per-student endowment, other colleges, like the University of Florida, with less per-student endowment than NYU have also shown that poorer students don’t have to be buried in debt to get the education needed to help them move up in society. As Hill told ProPublica, “Schools that have the resources should be giving out more in need-based grant aid.”
We agree with Hill and ask NYU to consider the necessary policy changes to make college more affordable for low income students.
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