With a comprehensive bill of $46,860 landing on the doorsteps of Jumbo parents each year, financial aid is becoming an increasingly important factor for Tufts students today. For college students in general, the results of financial aid can have a lasting impact on a college graduate for years when post-graduate debt builds up.
It was in light of this issue that three of Tufts' peer NESCAC schools, Williams College, Wesleyan University and Colby College, recently announced that they will be changing their financial aid policies to help alleviate future debt burdens of their students.
Wesleyan has eliminated loans for low income students, while Williams has completely replaced loans with grants for all of its students. Colby College will replace loans with grants for students who are residents of Maine.
David Pesci, director of media relations at Wesleyan, said that this change in financial aid policy has been a long-term goal for the school.
"We've had a long-standing commitment to try to eliminate loans whenever possible," he said.
At Wesleyan, students with a family income of $40,000 or less will graduate without debt, and other students' post-graduate debts will be reduced by 35 percent.
"Our ultimate goal is to eliminate all loans, but our first step is to do the best we can for students who need it most," Pesci said.
Although Wesleyan had been planning on eventually amending its financial aid policy, the main catalyst for change was the recent inauguration of Wesleyan's new president, Michael Roth. According to Pesci, Roth made financial aid a priority.
"It was the first hard initiative he hit on," Pesci said.
Pesci noted that although plans to change financial aid policies had been in the works for a long time, many in the administration did not see this change coming so soon.
"It caught some people by surprise ... I don't know if it was really anticipated beyond the senior staff here." Pesci said.
Williams, Wesleyan and Colby are not alone in their recent decisions to move toward loan elimination in favor of grants. They join a list of prominent U.S. schools, including Amherst College, Davidson College and Princeton University, who have also amended their financial aid policies in the last few years to replace student loans with grants.
Tufts has not adopted such a program, partially due to lack of resources and a separate push to adopt a need-blind admission process. Of the other NESCAC schools who have adopted loan-reduction programs, Williams and Wesleyan have need-blind admissions while Colby does not.
Nonetheless, Executive Dean of Arts and Sciences Leah McIntosh said that Tufts has been making vast improvements in the realm of financial aid in the last few years.
"Tufts has increased in the last couple of years the amount of financial aid we're giving," McIntosh said. "Because of the generosity of our alumni, we've been able to really increase the amount of financial aid we've been able to give out."
One of the largest deterring factors schools face in increasing financial aid or reducing loans in favor of grants is endowment size. According to Pesci, Wesleyan's endowment has been increasing at a high rate in recent years.
"We've been growing our endowment," Pesci said. "We just finished a capital campaign two years ago."
McIntosh also stressed the importance of endowment size in relation to the amount of grant money that can be awarded.
"It is very helpful to have a large endowment," McIntosh said. "Endowments are what produce a lot of the funding universities can put into financial aid."
Although Tufts' endowment has been increasing, Director of Financial Aid Patricia Reilly said the university is not yet able to completely eliminate loans. Tufts has, however, been working towards the goal of reducing debt burdens.
"As the capital campaign progresses, and our financial aid resources increase, we may be able to make the decision to commit to such a policy on a long term basis," Reilly said an e-mail to the Daily.
While Williams' endowment is larger than Tufts', both Colby and Wesleyan have significantly smaller endowments. According to a 2006 survey by the National Association of College and University Business Owners (NACUBO), Wesleyan's endowment was $619 million and Colby's was $482 million. The survey listed Tufts' endowment at $1.2 billion.
Reilly said that, thanks to recent increases in endowment size, Tufts is already making progress in the replacement of loans with grants.
"For the Class of 2011, because of increased financial aid made available through the capital campaign, we were able to offer no loans or reduced loans for some of our students from low income families," Reilly said. "We plan to continue this policy for the Class of 2012."
But while many schools are turning their financial aid focus to eliminating loans, Reilly said the next step for Tufts is making admissions need-blind.
"Our highest priority is to be able to be need-blind in our admissions policy and we are making good progress towards this goal," she said.
Reilly said that although Tufts has not replaced loans with grants for low income students, it has the lowest cohort default rate - defined as the percentage of a school's borrowers who enter repayment on certain federal loan programs during a given fiscal year - in Massachusetts, and one of the lowest in the country.
"Tufts' most recent default rate was 0.2 percent," Reilly said. "This means that only two out of 1000 Tufts student borrowers defaulted on their loans ... the national default rate is slightly above four percent."
Because of Tufts' low default rate, Reilly noted that reducing post graduate debt for Tufts may not be as much of a problem as it is for other schools.
"Although we are concerned about student loan levels and will continue to strive to keep loan levels as low as possible, most Tufts graduates appear to be able to repay their student loans in a timely manner," Reilly said.
