Speaking in blunt terms about the future of the college, President Michael McPherson said that Macalester will be forced to make “compromises on educational quality” over the next 10 years unless it can attract a wealthier student body.
In an interview with The Mac Weekly, McPherson painted a less than rosy picture of Macalester's financial future. He said that, given the rising costs associated with offering a top-quality education, the college can not realistically continue to dole out need-based financial aid to fully two-thirds of the student body.
“Either we're going to have success in somewhat reducing the percentage of the class that is really needy,” McPherson said, “or we're going to have to make some compromises on education quality in order to balance the budget.”
The challenge, as administrators see it, is finding a way to reduce the percentage of students on financial aid without abandoning the principles of need-blind admission. With a need-blind admission policy, a student's ability to pay is not a factor in the admissions process.
Since they cannot turn away students who need help paying for college, administrators hope to stack the deck in their favor by recruiting a wealthier applicant pool, thus increasing the likelihood that these students will matriculate and pay all or most of the full cost of tuition.
“We’re not going to have the need to worry about need-blind versus non-need-blind because we’re going to have the kind of student body that is going to be what we want,” said Economics Professor Gary Krueger, who was chair of the Strategic Directions Committee.
But so far there is little agreement about how to go about attracting more students who can afford the $120,000-plus price tag of a four-year Macalester education. Among the class of 2005, about 70 percent of the student body receives some kind of need-based financial aid. Only 28 students receive non-need-based aid, mostly in the form of National Merit Scholarships.
The final version of the strategic directions report, a lengthy set of policy proposals approved by the Board of Trustees in October, suggests using merit scholarships as a way to lure wealthier applicants to the college. These merit scholarships would not necessarily be doled out on the basis of need. Rather, they would serve as a way to compete for affluent students.
According to the Strategic Directions report: “We are currently losing many low and no-need gifted students (majority and minority students) to other colleges who are offering them merit scholarships. For example, if we could attract a gifted no-need student by offering the student a $5,000 merit scholarship, the College not only brings in a gifted student, it may save money.”
The merit aid proposal is the only specific proposal discussed in the financial aid section of the report. But in recent weeks, McPherson and Krueger himself have backed off from the idea. Both have said that offering scholarships could ignite a bidding war among rival schools.
“You have to be very careful about getting into a bidding war for these very qualified students,” McPherson said. “If you do, you don't do yourself any favors.”
Krueger said the merit aid proposals merely represented part of an ongoing discussion about financial aid. “We felt it was important to include the background parts of the report, which were part of our discussion and our thoughts, but not necessarily anything we wanted to go forward with.”
Director of Financial Aid Brian Lindeman has also expressed misgivings about the merit scholarship approach: “My opinion, speaking as a financial aid officer is that financial aid is there to provide access to a college education, not as a reward for high-achievers.” He went on to say that, “Harvard didn’t get to be Harvard by giving out a lot of merit aid. It got to be Harvard by offering a high quality education. If we want to attract more qualified students, I’d put money into academic programs before I would merit aid.”
For his part, McPherson has said the best way to attract more wealthy students is to improve Macalester's national reputation. He said that part of the college's inability to attract low-need students stems from its location in the Midwest. Many affluent families across the nation send their children to schools on the East Coast.