To Wesleyan Students and Alumni

, by Jacon Mayer,

I initially wrote this letter to class of 2014 on their graduation day, but never managed to publish it. Perhaps it is for the best: graduation is a special day, a day to bask in your accomplishment, to sit in the sun, nurse your crushing hangover, and silently curse the Taiko drums. Perhaps it is better suited for the falling leaves and crisp, serious air, for a new semester and a new class at Wes.

It’s not a happy letter, but nor is it one of blame; this one’s on all of us. The pride that filled me on graduation day lingered for several years — I had a bumper sticker, a hoody, the usual things. Sadly, that pride was for a place that no longer exists. It was for a school that admitted students based on merit, not their parents’ bank account. As you all know, beginning with the class of 2017, now sophomores, Wesleyan began considering ability to pay as a criterion for admission. Rejected applicants, unable to meet the hefty price tag of a Wesleyan education, are now left to wonder whether they were insufficiently talented or insufficiently wealthy. Admitted students can now reasonably question whether they truly earned their spot.

A Pernicious Narrative

I am constantly surprised by the number of Wes alumni who take this monumental change to University policy as a matter of course. “We couldn’t afford it,” they tell me, invoking a fuzzy math, shocking in its ignorance. President Roth, who revoked need-blind admissions for transfer and international students the year I graduated, has managed to spread this narrative even as he publicly acknowledges its fiction. He does this by putting “need-blind” in scare quotes, glibly promising a commitment to economic diversity by shunning “admission criteria that correlate with wealth” (as if only SATs correlate with wealth—never mind that wealth itself is now a criterion), and reiterating the school’s commitment to “meet full need,” which is sort of a sick joke, if it can decide that the needy aren’t admitted at all.

As he couches the discussion of need-blind admissions in the jargon of financial stability, he intentionally conflates the two, perpetuating this desired fiction. How easily we submit to the technocrats! It’s logistics, you see. We just can’t afford it anymore.

Let me be clear: a need-blind admissions policy is not something that costs money. The school’s financial aid budget, now bolstered by the hugely successful This is Why campaign, is what it is; it’s capped, both bureaucratically and literally — which means that eliminating NB moves Wesleyan no closer to “sustainable affordability,” (whatever that means). Need-blind admissions are not financial aid. But the narrative is persistent: a seemingly simple explanation that perhaps does not sit well with many alumni, but at least pays due diligence to the realist roots of their neoliberalism. The alumni responded to the elimination of NB with a huge outpouring of financial support.

Let us begin this new academic year by acknowledging the “can’t afford it” narrative for the red herring it is, and discussing instead the merits of NB, the challenges of offering financial aid, and the future of Wesleyan.

De Jure v. De Facto

It would be silly to deny that Wesleyan and its peer institutions have long been stomping grounds for the rich. As the sixth most expensive school in the country, at $60,214 per year for 2013–2014, a year of Wesleyan costs 1.2 years of median U.S. household income. The poverty line for a family of four is $23,850; one Wesleyan education, theoretically, can support a family for 10 years.

Something as expensive as Wesleyan will always divide the haves and the have-nots. The spate of recent philosophizing on the value of college is unlikely to do much to reign in the bubble, if indeed it is a true bubble. College tuition has risen 400% relative to inflation in the last thirty years, yet it seems unlikely the top tier will ever pop: the 1% and the .01% will always be willing to pay for their children to join the club.

It’s an old question, then: what’s in a name? Wes may have had NB admissions, but it was and has always been a haven of the wealthy. The truly poor never apply: college, if it’s in the cards, is an evening or at least a local proceeding. And middle-income students are rare as well: one can only take so much crippling debt. What’s really changed?

Yet need-aware admissions are morally repugnant. Wesleyan is de facto a place of privilege — but in making it de jure as well, President Roth has trampled on the ideals so often taught, learned and lived at Wesleyan. His decisions says: Wesleyan is not a place for poor people, nor should it be.

Put simply: I don’t think it’s a very good idea for an incoming freshman to take on $200k of debt to attend Wesleyan, but I’m damn sure I want them to have the option.

Names Matter

A perverse pleasure of being a Wesleyan alum: lots of people have never heard of it. Among those who have (read: rich, college-educated), Wes connotes lots of positive things. But with the many people who’ve don’t know it, you can avoid the inverse judgment, often a set of pejorative assumptions about the crass decadence of expensive schooling, some of which are perfectly reasonable. It’s always a pleasure to watch a friend of mine squirm when people ask her where she went to college (she has the grace to be slightly embarrassed by her Harvard degree). The power of a name is one of the most ancient epistemological questions; in the modern era, it often manifests as the power of a brand.

If you’re reading this, you’re a student, an alum, a parent, a pre-frosh. I don’t need to explain why names matter. Your encounters with academia have, at a bare minimum, convinced you that language has power. Language has power. Language has power.

It matters that we no longer bear a NB label. We are now explicitly legitimizing the status quo. Elite colleges are one tool that the elite use to solidify and pass down their status — and we’re OK with that. Don’t worry though, we’re still committed to providing as much financial aid as possible: such is the duty of the liberal elite.

Poor students considering an application to Wes: feel condescended to yet? You should. Deltas and Epsilons need not apply.

More Than Just Language

Beginning last September, the character of Wesleyan began to change. Before, we were a community of the wealthy; now it is a community of everyone-knows-everyone-else-is-wealthy. It’s not a trivial difference. The arms race between elite colleges for flashy new buildings and athletic centers will continue, even as higher education in the U.S. becomes more and more of a sellers’ market. Slowly but surely, financial aid at Wes will decrease as the administration puts pressure on admissions to help them meet their bottom line. Diversity — not of color, or origin, or ethnicity, but of life experience — will diminish even further, and the rich students of Wesleyan will continue to live and breathe in the same bubble of wealth that they have known for their entire lives. The culture of service that imbued Wes when I was there (class of 2015 included, I hope) will fade, perhaps is already fading, and will be replaced by the charity-as-liberal-guilt-assuager, which even now rings sickeningly in Wesleyan’s FA policy.

What did Wesleyan gain with this decision? That’s hard to say. The best answer, I think, is the luxury to plan the financial aid budget, its expenditures and investments, over a longer arc. A long timeframe for financial planning is certainly a worthwhile goal, and it is one that is achievable within the context of NB admissions. As the FA budget is capped each year, the FA office should have no problem investing the $300+ million raised by This is Why to provide a stable aid budget, with plenty of safety margin for off-years. No excuse remains for the continued abrogation of NB.

What Now?

It’s difficult to retain the noble idealism of college. Real life intrudes, with bills and crazy bosses, mice and landlords and uncertainty. Lots of uncertainty. The ills of the world are legend and manifest, and it’s easy to feel powerless.

Here’s what I propose: let someone, perhaps an aspiring lawyer, found The Ethical Wesleyan Fund. A trust, it will hold alumni donations in escrow until Roth reinstates NB admissions, and then require a commitment from the school to spend the money on financial aid and to maintain NB (it should be noted here that donations to the Wesleyan Fund or the This is Why campaign bear no such restrictions). How big would such a fund need to grow before Roth decides the costs outweigh the benefits?

If you have the funds, and are thinking fondly of the amazing students who were sitting next to you on graduation day, give to the Ethical Wesleyan Fund. But don’t give straight to Wesleyan, because your donation will support an institution that no longer aspires to be available to everyone. It never was for everyone, but the aspiration helped define who we were and where we wanted to go. It bred a generation of socially concerned business leaders, artists, activists. The lofty ideals that we screamed from Foss Hill and whispered in Olin shall carry the bitter taste of hypocrisy unless we use what little power we have, amplified together, to right this wrong and pay forward the Wesleyan experience to those who have earned it, not those who pay cash.

Jacon Mayer is a member of the Class of 2010.

  • guest

    Jacon, I appreciate what you’re saying, but this is wholly being driven by finances. Wesleyan’s endowment is woefully behind peer institutions. There is no way, even with the successful “This is Why” campaign that the university can operate just on income from the endowment. To be able to support noble causes, one needs money. Wesleyan doesn’t have it.

  • alum

    A couple points:

    “I am constantly surprised by the number of Wes alumni who take this monumental change to University policy as a matter of course. “We couldn’t afford it,” they tell me, invoking a fuzzy math, shocking in its ignorance. President Roth, who revoked need-blind admissions for transfer and international students the year I graduated, has managed to spread this narrative even as he publicly acknowledges its fiction. He does this by putting “need-blind” in scare quotes, glibly promising a commitment to economic diversity”

    >> Roth wasn’t dissing need-blind – he’s dissing doing need-blind half-assed, which is what Wesleyan had been doing for the past 20 years. Wes was “need blind” and then loading financial aid packages with insane amounts of loans. Even more than current packages.

    “Let me be clear: a need-blind admissions policy is not something that costs money. The school’s financial aid budget, now bolstered by the hugely successful This is Why campaign, is what it is; it’s capped, both bureaucratically and literally — which means that eliminating NB moves Wesleyan no closer to “sustainable affordability,” (whatever that means). Need-blind admissions are not financial aid.”

    >> A need-blind admissions policy done properly (like Bowdoin and Amherst do it) does indeed cost more money. Not only does the budget swing year to year, but then you can offer students financial aid packages that don’t include ridiculous amounts of loans.

    “It would be silly to deny that Wesleyan and its peer institutions have long been stomping grounds for the rich. As the sixth most expensive school in the country, at $60,214 per year for 2013–2014, a year of Wesleyan costs 1.2 years of median U.S. household income. The poverty line for a family of four is $23,850; one Wesleyan education, theoretically, can support a family for 10 years.”

    >> That’s true, but Wes has now capped tuition increases to inflation, something peer schools have not done (except Middlebury, which is doing inflation + 1%), so Wes will gradually fall below its peers in tuition costs.

    “The arms race between elite colleges for flashy new buildings and athletic centers will continue, even as higher education in the U.S. becomes more and more of a sellers’ market. Slowly but surely, financial aid at Wes will decrease as the administration puts pressure on admissions to help them meet their bottom line. Diversity — not of color, or origin, or ethnicity, but of life experience — will diminish even further, and the rich students of Wesleyan will continue to live and breathe in the same bubble of wealth that they have known for their entire lives.”

    >> Wesleyan does not have a single new building on the boards. 41 Wyllys was supposed to be a museum – it was deemed too expensive. The new science center was cancelled. You also have the dog and tail backwards – financial aid is going to increase as the bottom line improves. Why? As you said, elite colleges are in an arms race, and being need-blind is a status only the wealthiest schools have. Hamilton and Vassar recently reinstated need-blind. Why? Because they raised enough money to do so. Wesleyan has already stated that one more endowment-focused capital campaign will raise enough funds to reinstate need-blind. Tufts is in the same position as Wes, trying to get back to need-blind.

    “What did Wesleyan gain with this decision? That’s hard to say. The best answer, I think, is the luxury to plan the financial aid budget, its expenditures and investments, over a longer arc. A long timeframe for financial planning is certainly a worthwhile goal, and it is one that is achievable within the context of NB admissions. As the FA budget is capped each year, the FA office should have no problem investing the $300+ million raised by This is Why to provide a stable aid budget, with plenty of safety margin for off-years. No excuse remains for the continued abrogation of NB.”

    >> Removing need-blind for now allows the school to a) offer aid packages that have reasonable amounts of loans and b) allow Wes to prevent the % of budget that financial aid comprises to rise to unsustainable levels while the endowment recovers. Most of Wesleyan’s peer schools have their financial aid budgets covered by annual endowment payouts. Wesleyan’s endowment is so paltry per student, Wes has to dip into the rest of its budget to meet even non-need blind aid totals. Wesleyan is indeed investing proceeds from This Is Why, and this will help bring back need-blind… but the investments have to cook in the markets for a bit before the money grows.

    Wesleyan got into this situation in the first place because it spent money it didn’t have, and that resulted in the endowment stagnating. Look at every school that is need-blind. All of them (I have yet to find more than 1 or 2 exceptions) have larger endowment-per-students than Wesleyan. Wes doesn’t have the money. It’s not an illusion, it’s not a ploy to bring more wealthy people to campus. It is fact. When Wesleyan’s endowment per student increases to the point need blind is sustainable(with reasonable loan packages), need-blind will return. It is no coincidence that the schools with the best financial aid are the wealthiest.

    “But don’t give straight to Wesleyan, because your donation will support an institution that no longer aspires to be available to everyone.”

    >> The This Is Why page states $200 million is being raised for financial aid. It’s the first step towards returning to need blind. If that’s not aspiring to be available to everyone, I don’t know what is. If Wes goes back to need-blind now, the aid packages will be crappier, the endowment draw will be higher, and Wes will be even farther away from offering aid packages with the likes of Amherst or Bowdoin. It’s the classic marshmallow test – one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later? Wes is choosing two marshmallows later.

  • Jacon

    To the alum who responded:

    You’re doing it again…. need blind admissions and financial aid are not the same thing. When you refer to “need-blind done properly,” what you actually mean is a “meets full need” financial aid policy: certainly a goal worth aspiring to, and I hope Wes can get there.

    In the meantime, it’s important that we maintain a need-blind admissions policy even if it means that students who cannot afford to come are admitted. When admissions are need-aware, we are conflating the ability to pay with the theoretically meritocratic ability to earn admission. They must be separate for Wes to remain a moral institution. Now, I suppose you’ll object: “it’s not moral to admit students who can’t pay.” It absolutely is, and it’s one of many crucial steps we need to take to separate wealth from “worth,” and start having a more honest conversation about the role of wealth in our society.

    While again reiterating that you’re doing exactly the problematic things I am criticizing (conflating FA and need-blind admissions), I’d like to respond specifically to “Removing need-blind for now allows the school to a) offer aid packages that have reasonable amounts of loans and b) allow Wes to prevent the % of budget that financial aid comprises to rise to unsustainable levels while the endowment recovers.”

    A. No, it doesn’t. It allows the school to plan those aid packages better: in other words, to shape the freshman class around the aid packages it plans to offer. The amount of aid Wes offers to students in need has nothing to do with whether admissions are need-blind or not. That said, I very much agree that offering fewer, stronger aid packages is better than more, smaller packages. But students to whom Wes cannot offer aid should not be denied admission. The choice should be theirs.

    B. Wes does this anyway, need-blind or not. As I said in my piece, the FA budget is capped, both in policy and quite literally (in that it’s finite). How much money is allocated for FA is a separate policy decision from being need-blind. The only thing they gain with need-aware admissions is the ability to shape a freshman class around their FA budget for that year: and, as I said, being able to plan that budget over a long arc is a nice luxury, but it’s not worth the cost of telling all those HS senior who still kinda, sorta hope to want to believe that social mobility exists in America that they’re too poor to even be admitted.

    yours
    Jacon

    • alum

      I am not, in fact, conflating need blind and financial aid. I am simply linking the two under the premise that Wesleyan does not offer immoral aid packages (namely, inflated amounts of loans). When this premise is included, along with a capped aid budget, need blind does indeed involve increasing financial aid.

      I do indeed understand the distinction between financial aid and need blind, and my argument is that they cannot be separated in this situation. If you go “need-blind” with a capped aid budget, you wind up offering packages with ridiculous amount of loans. That in and of itself is immoral. You already countered, “Who is Wes to decide whether a loan ammount is immoral?” and while I understand the argument, I would bet a lot of money that plenty of potential students will take on that debt anyway, only to regret it years later (or not understand the ramifications of taking on that debt in the first place). Not only that, but more importantly, Wesleyan will lose even more cross-admit battles to peer schools. If I only have to take on $8,000 in loans to attend Vassar or $25,000 in loans to attend Wesleyan, you and I both know I’ll be in Poughkeepsie come August. Wesleyan already has a poorer yield than peer schools (read: more loans) – do we want to exacerbate that even further?

      As to your points:

      A) If Wes has a capped budget, and is not need blind (and projecting it will have to be need-sensitive to a percentage of the class) that by definition means that going need blind will result in more loans. If I am a micro school and have $500,000 as my grant budget and have 10 students coming in getting 50k each in grants and 10k in loans under need-sensitive admission, then 12 students coming in with the same need under a need-blind scenario, each will get 41.7k in grants and over 18k in loans. Wesleyan offers financial aid packages along with admission decisions in March/April, not when the final class is tallied in May. This is an important distinction. You are arguing that students should be the ones to decide if the latter aid package is worth it versus the former, and my argument is not only is that detrimental to their futures, but even more detrimental to the ability of Wes to recruit the most talented, most ambitious, most driven students to Middletown.

      B) When done properly and with the endowment to support it, the aid budget is not actually capped. No loan schools are the perfect example of this. I’m not saying Wes didn’t cap its aid budget when it called itself need-blind, but at some schools, it’s not capped.

      I do understand what you’re saying, and I think we’re just going to agree to disagree.

      • Jacon

        And I, likewise, understand yours. The central difference, I think, is this: need-blind admissions and financial aid can and must be separated.

        Let me start here: first, re: (B), yes, we agree that “meets full need” is the holy grail to shoot for. In the meantime…

        Re: (A): you’re right about losing cross-admit battles, but that’s an argument for increasing the financial aid budget, not for need-aware admissions. Need-aware admissions are, yes, a great way to offer reasonable grant packages to a select few needy students. That, unfortunately, is not worth the costs of need-aware admissions that I outlined in my original piece, namely that to deny admittance because of poverty is a priori wrong, and a betrayal of the promise of a liberal education.

        We must not continue to conflate wealth and worth. Again, I don’t think it’s a good idea for a student to attend Wed on pure loans, and they may indeed regret it (better advice could be offered to about why this might not be a good idea), but it’s absolutely essential that a. they know they’ve earned a spot, if they want it, and b. that everyone who actually arrives at Wes knows they’ve earned their spot too. Finally, it’s critical that Wes maintain a diversity of life experience, or it will become just another cookie-cutter elite school, a la Amherst.

        Sorry for the late response, I was on vacation. You are horribly, disastrously wrong, but I do appreciate the dialogue.

      • alum

        Need-blind admissions and financial aid, as I argued, cannot be separated when there are limited funds, aka the situation Wesleyan is currently in. Ideally, yes, they should be separated, but for the reasons I outlined, it is not practical to do so. In order to be need-blind right now (aka capped aid budget), the aid packages at Wesleyan will become vastly less generous, to the point of Wesleyan not being competitive with peer schools at all.

        “you’re right about losing cross-admit battles, but that’s an argument for increasing the financial aid budget, not for need-aware admissions”

        > That argument about this being about increasing the aid budget is a non-starter here, because Wesleyan isn’t increasing its aid budget (that’s another discussion entirely with regards to endowment draw and the like). With a financial aid budget that is capped, my argument is in fact for need-aware admissions (precisely because the financial aid budget isn’t increasing). Do I like need-aware? Hell no. I was extremely disappointed when Wesleyan announced it, and I am counting the days until need-blind returns. But I see the evil necessity for the time being.

        “Need-aware admissions are, yes, a great way to offer reasonable grant packages to a select few needy students.”

        > No – need-aware is a great way to offer reasonable grant packages to MANY students. As the math I showed in a previous post shows, the aid varies dramatically when a few thousand dollars in loans is involved per package.

        “but it’s absolutely essential that a. they know they’ve earned a spot, if they want it, and b. that everyone who actually arrives at Wes knows they’ve earned their spot too”

        > Wesleyan, unfortunately, isn’t God’s gift to the Earth, and there are plenty of other elite liberal arts schools that will open the same doors. We must do all we can to support the admitted students so that they have the freedom to do what they choose after graduation without being burdened by debt. You may argue that it should be their choice, and I’ll again point out the cross admit battle argument. Wes could drop the full-need part in order to stay need-blind, but that would be even more disastrous in terms of cross-admits and supporting its students.

        “Finally, it’s critical that Wes maintain a diversity of life experience, or it will become just another cookie-cutter elite school, a la Amherst.”

        > It’s odd that that you use Amherst as an example of a being cookie-cutter elite school, as Amherst is a more diverse campus than Wesleyan, both racially and socioeconomically/higher percentage of students on Pell grants and/or receiving aid. This is mostly due to Amherst being need-blind and being able to offer aid packages without loans to even middle class students (some of whom probably got accepted to Wesleyan but declined due to loans).

        ” You are horribly, disastrously wrong, but I do appreciate the dialogue.”

        > A difference of opinion, neither of which can be proved right or wrong, but I likewise appreciate the dialogue. Hopefully this entire argument will be irrelevant in 5-10 years (perhaps we could convince Mr. Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines and an alumnus of good ole’ Wes, to donate a few hundred million dollars?)

  • Adam

    I attended wesleyan from 1997-2001. My parents are public middle school teachers. I went to a crappy public school and had ok SATs. I graduated Wesleyan with a 3.9 in the sciences, High and University Honors, was a Watson Fellow, Phi Beta Kappa, with a full ride to Cornell for PHD. I am 100 percent certain that if need blind was not in place….I would not be a Wes alum today. Because of my Wesleyan education, I today have an amazing and profitable career in the oil and gas industry. However, In light of my experience, I cannot in good conscience donate to an institution that admittedly uses wealth and privledge as a means for entry. Even to my be loved alma mater. There are too many other good causes in the world that actually desperately need the money.

  • L

    Hate to tell you, but ability to pay has always been a factor in admissions. Whether under a “need blind” system or not, Wesleyan must admit a certain percentage of students who pay full price in order to balance its budget. True now. True before. True always. Particularly given the abysmal financial planning and performance of Wesleyan’s Board and Administration over a very substantial period of time, this is essential. You eventually pay for foolishness and wishful thinking, which has been abundant in Wesleyan’s financial administration. Welcome to the world.

  • L

    “That’s true, but Wes has now capped tuition increases to inflation, something peer schools have not done (except Middlebury, which is doing inflation + 1%) . . . ”

    You might inquire what index Wesleyan is comparing itself too. Dartmouth boasted its policy of limiting increases to inflation, but had to make an embarrassing admission when costs went up 3% last year. The admission was that Dartmouth is indexed to the inflation calculation for Higher Education, which has consistently been about double the consumer price index. “Consistently” means “for several decades.”

    Just what index is Wesleyan indexing to?

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