Last December, Harvard announced a groundbreaking effort to use its vast endowment to extend financial aid to students from middle-income families — including those with incomes of up to $180,000. Yale, Princeton, and Stanford soon followed its lead by increasing their financial assistance. Their laudable efforts pose a difficult question: What can be done to keep public universities affordable for low- and middle-income families?
Berkeley’s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau, has stepped into the national spotlight as he grapples to find answers to this challenging question. “The vast majority of Americans are educated in public universities that cannot provide the financial aid packages of private universities with large endowments,” he stated in a recent USA Today editorial. “It could become more expensive for a student from a family of low or moderate means to attend a public university than for a student from a well-to-do family to attend a private college. The solution to this dilemma lies in new public-private partnerships to create endowments that will ensure access for all students, regardless of family income.”
The resources gap
“At Cal, it’s all about scale: a far greater number of students need financial aid, and the school has far more limited resources because it doesn’t have an endowment even close to those of its private peers,” says Scott Biddy, vice chancellor for university relations. In other words, Berkeley’s $369 million in estimated scholarship endowments (excluding athletic scholarships) is spread thin because it must be used to help qualifying students out of Berkeley's more than 24,600 undergraduate and 10,300 graduate students.So even though the total cost to attend Berkeley seems low at $25,000, compared to $45,000 at similar private universities, Berkeley's undergraduates have far less financial aid available to them. “We have less aid to give our students than the privates, so in order to meet their cost of education, Berkeley students have to borrow more money and work,” says Cheryl Resh, director of financial aid.
The cost of higher education is projected to continue rising at a significant rate. At Berkeley, nearly 75 percent of students receive some type of financial aid. “Just five years from now, thousands of undergraduates are expected to be graduating with debt burdens approaching $35,000 — even those who have had work-study jobs throughout their academic careers,” adds Resh.
Preserving excellence
Berkeley’s quest to sustain access to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds does not come at the expense of lowering its academic standards. It is one of the country’s most selective universities; less than a quarter of all applicants are admitted, and 98 percent of incoming freshmen graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
Attending Berkeley has long been a gateway to opportunity for students of all backgrounds, and last year nearly one-third of its undergraduate students came from households with annual incomes of under $40,000. That means about nine times more low-income students attend Berkeley than Stanford, says Resh. In fact, Berkeley serves more students experiencing financial hardship than all of the Ivy League universities combined. Even more striking, half of these low-income students — roughly 4,000 — come from families with incomes of less than $20,000.
For many of these young people, higher education — which they can afford only with the help of significant grants and scholarships — is the key to new opportunities that can change their lives.
“It is an unfortunate reality that access to higher education is inherently unbalanced,” says scholarship recipient Cesar Valdez, a junior majoring in art practice and social welfare. “Scholarships, however, open the doors for many talented students to thrive and succeed,” he adds.
The middle-class challenge
One of the most complicated challenges public universities face is finding more- effective ways to help middle-income students. Ironically, it may now be more expensive for a student from a family earning $90,000 to attend Berkeley than for one whose family earns $180,000 to attend Harvard.
Says Birgeneau, “I am worried that we are creating a hole in the middle. That is, students from well-to-do families who want to come to Berkeley will still come. Poor students will also come, but some middle-income families may choose to attend private universities because they offer more-generous financial-aid packages.”
Transformative change
Birgeneau says that a strong public-private partnership must be formed to match state funds with private donations in order to create additional scholarships for students, and that this is critical to upholding the University’s public mission.
“Public education and universal access for our brightest students, irrespective of their ability to pay, has been one of the most important social concepts that has made America great,” says Birgeneau. “Increasing the amount of scholarships for low- and middle-income students is one of the best investments we can make in our country’s future, and it is our top priority at Berkeley.”
