Test 2

It's a tricky act.

Small, private, liberal arts college F&M is looking to shore-up it's finances, while still providing a strong opportunity for need-based financial aid:

Franklin & Marshall has been highlighted for reallocating funds from non-need-based aid to need-based aid. Today, it advertises itself as basing financial aid solely on need, and it is a member of the American Talent Initiative, a group of colleges and universities seeking to expand college access for low- and moderate-income students. It is not, however, need blind in admissions.

In recent years, the college has been spending more and more on financial aid. In the fiscal year ending in June 2011, just before Porterfield’s inauguration, Franklin & Marshall recorded $99.5 million in tuition and fee revenue and spent $28.6 million in student financial aid, its audited financial statements show. In 2018, it took in $132.6 million in tuition and fees against $56.1 million in financial aid.

That means that although its tuition and fee revenue rose by almost $33.2 million on paper over the seven-year period, the college actually collected only $5.6 million more in net tuition and fee revenue in 2018 than it did in 2011.

[College president Barbara K. Altmann] has said that the current budget deficit was partly caused by increased financial aid. But it is not the primary driver of the deficit, she said in a telephone interview Wednesday. The college is not backing away from its commitment to using financial aid to bring in the best and brightest students, no matter their origin, she said.

[...]

A larger endowment would not be a panacea, of course. And Altmann acknowledged that other private colleges with larger endowments, like Oberlin College, have shown signs of financial pressures rocking the sector in recent years.

That would seem to raise serious questions about the long-term viability of the high-tuition, high-discount model -- particularly for institutions that award aid primarily based on need, instead of using non-need-based aid to chase students who may have less academic prowess but come from wealthy families and would generate more revenue for the colleges where they enroll. They are particularly explosive questions because they lie at the intersection of wealth, privilege, race and opportunity in higher education.

Not that there is anything going on with questions around race and opportunity in higher ed right now...