The first mission of academia (and Admissions offices) is to get the top candidates regardless of ability to pay. I stand by that. Affluence, SES and academic excellence are direct relationships. Yes, there are outliers, but the graphs are are steady and the correlation is absolutely there.
I have dealt with the most selective schools for many years, and personally have seen this consistently throughout the years. I’ve sat on scholarship committees and when SES, financial need are taken out of the picture, it’s clear that those who do not need the funds are the ones who easily qualify for them except once in a great while. There are some ugly truths that out there regarding who indeed are the best picks.
The universities’ missions in outreach are secondary to the pursuit of academic excellence. Even so, the schools get criticized from deviating from this mission by having diversity in SES, color, ethnicity as a component of the admissions process. URM as flagged category is bitterly resented. The very top schools can find the cream of the crop including diversity, but as the school selectivity drops, it becomes more difficult to make the balance.
The drop out rate among those who are not well prepared for rigorous college work is high as compared to those who are. I’ve seen this time and again. When the situation is laid out, those who feel the schools are not doing enough to promote social mobility scream the deck is stacked. They are. But long before these students get to college. And working on clearing the deck simply cannot happen soon enough.
So it’s not just the expenditure of funds that is at issue here but addressing the first mission of the university — that of academic excellence.
But for schools like Trinity, there is the funding issue as well. Harvard has no problem filling its seats with top students who can pay full price. In fact, even those who can’t, will have family members raid the pension, sell the house, borrow, even to sell an organ, to pay for their kids to go there. Not so, these smaller, lesser known schools with a history of academic excellence that want to continue. These days, the costs have risen, demographics have shifted, so that these schools are having to hustle.
My question is what schools like Trinity can do to remain viable. How can they keep up their mission, Mel the school going?