This is why its critical to look at “endowment per student” not the total value of the endowment. Both Lehigh and Georgetown’s are relatively low, Lehigh’s being $245,000 and Georgetown’s $136,000. They don’t actually have a ton of money to give away.
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I hope my experience may shed some light on these practices. Wrt Lehigh, they are quite generous to lower SES kids. I was blessed with a full Trustee scholarship and nearly a full ride as a Pell Grant kid decades ago. At that time, Lehigh’s aid packages included private university loans as well. I graduated with more than $20k in debt in the ‘80s. Now, fortunately, the financial aid packages for Pell Grant eligible kids do not include loans.
The philosophy there is if you yourself are college educated and have been making an upper middle class salary, you should be able to afford $80k a year out of pocket.
They do not factor in cost of living adjustments between Bethlehem PA and the high cost of living in large cities and their suburbs, nor do they consider the impact of extreme medical expenses. And they will count retirement savings against you, which is highly unusual. I got the distinct impression that their Financial Aid office had some experience with people attempting to play the numbers by contributing to retirement at the expense of college savings. And I also got the impression that Lehigh has little experience dealing with former Pell Grant kids who likely come from family cultures where saving for college comes after helping disadvantaged family members, and who, unlike the majority of Lehigh’s students, come from families where saving for college education is not a tradition and where parents do not expect any type of inheritance from their parents.
Lehigh has focused almost exclusively on increasing its racial and socioeconomic diversity through generous financial aid. The university was penalized in the USNWR rankings because of its low diversity percentages, so it made scholarships to these target groups a key part of its recent fundraising campaigns.
Unfortunately, I hear relations between the kids on scholarship and the full pay kids can be somewhat fraught. Perhaps unwittingly, Lehigh’s financial aid practices have contributed to a divide where, I understand, the BIPOC kids assume every white kid is from a wealthy family. They have created a divide which ed policy types call the “barbell affect.” You have a lot of kids from the top 5% to 10% in national income, and almost as many at the other side of the barbell, with fewer stretched in between. It doesn’t help that the wealthiest kids are conspicuous by their luxury cars, brand name clothes and spring break plans.
When I attended Lehigh, college expenses, while high, were not nearly as inflated as they are now. It seems as though there were far more kids from a broad swath of the middle and upper middle class simply because it was more affordable, parental employment had been more stable, and Lehigh drew a significant number of kids from PA, where the cost of living was so affordable that parents could save more for college than today, where jobs are insecure, and health and college costs have skyrocketed.
I had a wonderful experience at Lehigh, and would still recommend it for those who receive full Trustee scholarships or generous need-based aid, and of course those who can afford $320,000+ for an undergraduate degree.
Unfortunately, we made a tough decision to send my son elsewhere due to cost. It was an excruciating decision, because I still have close ties with Lehigh, and would have loved to share the Lehigh parent experience. I more than repaid my Lehigh scholarships many times over with many large five-figure donations prior to being faced with extreme medical and family expenses, yet I erred in not saving enough for college for my own kids. And as I told the Financial Aid rep who said I was disqualified because of our retirement savings, “My Lehigh professors would have never recommended that I withdraw retirement funds to pay for college expenses.”
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Great post. Thank you.
Very insightful. I am sure your kid will do fine or is doing fine.
Four years of “experience” IMO is definitely not worth a lifetime of loan payments or having to worry about parents because they did not save enough for retirement or worse, having to take care of their physical and financial needs. No one can take out a loan to pay for retirement!
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I’m so glad you found it insightful. And you are right- he is doing great. Literally packing for a semester abroad as I type, and upon his return he has an amazing summer analyst position lined up. He’s flying the nest!
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