Then the promise to admit the most qualified, diverse class possible and subsequently meet every student’s demonstrated need is not what Wes is offering and they need to come out and say that. Being prestigious enough to give hand-outs has nothing to do with it.

Your voice sounds familiar; I’ve heard it on the president’s blog page; I hear it on the alumni listserv. It seems to conflate righteous indignation at the moral and ethical questions raised by college access and affordabilty with what can only be described, quite frankly, as prestige. While I don’t think they are necessarily mutually exclusive (one can certainly acquire prestige by performing good works, e.g., Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, etc.) I do think it’s important to separate the two.

Fifty million dollars a year (the amount at which Wesleyan’s financial aid budget will be capped) isn’t exactly chicken feed. It will likely be the second or third largest single fund dedicated exclusively for financial aid within NESCAC. The only difference with the new policy is that it will no longer operate as a blank check.

Yes, I know. Blank checks are SO prestigious! Under a 100% need-blind policy, the host college has no way of predicting who will apply for aid or for how much; it is captive to a random, “first-come-first serve” process propelled largely by external events like the national economy, federal, state and local subsidies, and support for public education — all of which are rapidly eroding.

Wesleyan has been through this before; when Washington severely cut Pell grants during the Reagan administration, it briefly adopted a need-aware policy until it could fund the difference itself, which it has for the past thirty years. I see the present circumstances as no different.