Vassar tries to maintain promise to need-blind, despite fiscal crisis

Since the financial crisis hit last year, the College has been trying to work out the details of meeting 100 percent of financial need for all of its students. Not only has Vassar's endowment taken a significant hit, but the families of many students have been affected as well, and they may not be able to pay the same amount of tuition as they previously have. "In regards to our decision to go need-blind, the recession came at a very inopportune time," said Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Eismeier.

Prospective students from low-income backgrounds may also be looking more closely at Vassar now that the College is need-blind, and the Office of Financial Aid is expecting a significant increase in demonstrated need from the incoming class of 2013.

"There's been a double hit," explained Director of Financial Aid Michael Fraher. "We're still in the process of graduating classes that are need-aware, so the parent contributions of those classes were higher than the classes that we're bringing in under need-blind. And now we're dealing with the economy, which means that parent contributions are going down across the board. So there's a dramatic shift."

In fact, the amount of money that the College budgeted for financial aid this year has already been exceeded by more than $1.5 million. Vassar budgeted $34.6 million for financial aid in 2008-09 but, according to Fraher, that number is now above $36 million.

Fraher explained that part of that overage is due to the fact that a larger percentage of this year's freshman class relys on aid than the College was expecting. "And then we have been dealing with a lot of families with losses of jobs and foreclosures and have been doing a lot of revised financial aid packages over the last six months," he said.

The process of budgeting for financial aid is an especially complicated one because the College never knows how much aid the incoming class will require until all the matriculation letters are in. The numbers fluctuate from year to year, explained Eismeier.

"Most of our uncertainty comes from the incoming freshmen," she said. "It's clear to everyone now that we are entering a deep recession, and the next incoming class will be the next test for how much money we can expect to spend on aid in coming years. Applications went up for next year, and applications for aid went up as well, so now we're waiting to see how the yield comes out."

The College always tries to plan several years down the line in terms of budgeting, and it runs several types of forecast models to try to predict how much money it will have to spend in different areas over time. These models are never perfect, however, as they do not account for drastic shifts in the economy.

In making the decision to go need-blind in 2007, the College consulted the numbers from the previous several years and determined that it could afford the increase in aid that a need-blind policy would require.

"We always thought that we could handle about 50 percent of the students receiving grants," explained Eismeier. The number of students receiving any kind of need-based aid is always higher because many students who are not receiving grants, which are Vassar scholarships, still receive loans and do work-studies, which count as need-based aid. Loans and work-study aid does not come directly from the College's pocket, however, while grant aid does.

"If you averaged out the last few years of students receiving grant aid, we were below 50 percent," Eismeier said. "The first year that President Hill was here we were well below budget and thought maybe we could go need-blind."

Because of the financial crisis, the College has had to make some adjustments to those numbers this year. In the budget plan for 2009-10, the College is planning on 60 percent of the freshman class receiving grants. In addition, to compensate for a rising need in the upper classes, Vassar has created another large contingency in the budget.

The amount of money the College spends on financial aid has risen steadily in the last five years to account for a concurrent rise in tuition. In 2005-06, the College spent $25.4 million on aid; in 2006-07, it spent $26.4 million; in 2007-08 it spent $30.7 million, and in 2008-09 it spent $36.3 million, though it only budgeted $34.6 million. For next year, the College has budgeted $42.6 million for financial aid, the largest increase in the budget in many years.
But Fraher emphasized that budgeting is always an imprecise process. "There's only so much planning that you can do," he said, "and ultimately it comes down to the decisions of students. Soon, we'll see how much we're going to need to spend on aid next year, and we'll be able to use those number to plan for the future accordingly."

Financial aid is one of the few areas where the College is actually increasing its budget. But administrators have emphasized the College's commitment to remaining need-blind in coming years.

"I think there is a strong commitment to provide equal access," said Fraher. "That's what need-based financial aid is—equal opportunity and equal access for students who meet the academic requirements of the college but who don't necessarily have the same financial resources. From what I gather, it's going to take quite a bit for us to rethink that policy."

Hill echoed this sentiment, writing in an emailed statement, "I am hopeful that we can remain need blind going forward. We'll know more after we see what the Class of 2013 looks like in a few weeks. Clearly, the need for financial aid is greater now than ever."

According to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid David Borus, Vassar has also become more aggressive in its outreach to low-income students since turning need-blind. Some of its efforts have been joining with an organization called QuestBridge, which brings a number of applications each year from low-income students across the country, and extending Vassar's Poughkeepsie High School Scholarship Program.

"Before going need-blind, we were already doing a great many things with some success and that movement toward socio-economic diversity was accelerated by the decision to go need-blind," said Borus.

"Unless things change pretty dramatically and we are given directives to be less aggressive in our outreach, we're going to continue the efforts we're involved with," he added. "We are constantly looking for a diverse student body and there has been no indication that we should lessen those recruiting activities."

"I've been a financial aid officer for over thirty years," said Fraher. "I'm here to try to make an education possible for students, and working at a school like Vassar makes it much easier than if I was at a school that didn't meet 100 percent of need."