Before I enrolled at Brown, my father pointed out what he believed to be a significant contradiction within the University's financial aid policy. Certainly it is a contradiction that can be found in the financial aid policies of other universities as well, and indeed there may very well be a reasonable justification for the contradiction. But I have racked my brain long and hard and still cannot discover a good justification. Allow me to sift through the logic of Brown's financial aid philosophy as I see it, and then highlight the contradiction that my father pointed out to me.
It has long been the case at Brown that for students whose families earn more money, a greater portion of their financial aid package is in the form of student loans. Brown's new financial aid policy, approved by the Corporation on Feb. 23, will continue this loan-burden inequality. While students whose family income is under $100,000 will no longer have student loans - and that alone sounds very good when trumpeted in a press release or a speech - students within the $100,000 to $125,000 family income bracket will have $3,000 in loans a year, those in the $125,000 to $150,000 bracket will have $4,000 in loans a year and those in the $150,000-and-up bracket will have $5,000 in loans a year.
Brown claims that it meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need. Obviously this is not true; if it were, then there would have been no need to "enhance" financial aid nor for the Office of Financial Aid to suggest in its brochure that families "consider borrowing a private education loan" beyond ones' financial aid package from Brown. But we will assume for now that Brown does meet 100 percent of demonstrated financial need, as this is a central assumption of Brown's overall financial aid policy.
Now, what is the nature and purpose of a student loan? In a sense, the student is promising to study for a college degree in return for a fairly reasonable loan, and the student will pay back the loan once he or she receives a college degree and is a productive, income-earning member of society. Since we are assuming now that Brown meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need, then a student loan could not possibly be a way of putting a student into debt under the guise of providing financial aid for the student, now could it?
Furthermore, it should be noted that a student loan is a student loan and not a parent loan. A student loan is meant to be paid off by the student after he or she graduates from college; it is not meant to be paid off by the parents after their son or daughter graduates from college. A corollary assumption is that a college degree will provide the student an opportunity to earn enough money to pay off the loan, making it a good investment for one's future. Furthermore, Brown seems to assume that students will have fairly equal earning power once they graduate. If this were not at least implicitly assumed, then students would receive differing amounts of student loans based on career goals and concentrations - a mathematical economics major aspiring to be a hedge fund manager would receive a larger loan-burden than, say, an education major aspiring to be a public school teacher.
Herein lies the contradiction: Brown seems to assume that all its undergraduates will enter the workforce with fairly equal earning power, but the structure of Brown's financial aid loan policy seems to imply that students from richer families will earn more money when they graduate.
Obviously not all of us will graduate from Brown with the same earning power in the workforce. Our incomes will be dependent on our concentrations, our grades, what sort of jobs we pursue and other factors like these. Furthermore, many of us will go on to graduate school after Brown, which is a situation in which student loans become particularly dangerous to one's future financial well-being. But it should not be the case that students from richer families will always earn more money when they graduate from Brown. Indeed I really doubt, or at least would like to doubt, that Brown believes that to be the case either. And this begs the question: Why is Brown going to put a student loan burden only on those who come from families that make more than $100,000 a year?
Personally, I do not want to try and answer that question. I would like Brown to answer that question, and answer it bluntly and honestly. Perhaps my logic is wrong somewhere, and if that is the case, then I would like Brown to clarify why it is wrong. Really, though, I think that the contradiction arises because somewhere in the rhetoric of Brown's financial aid philosophy the University makes a statement that is not true. Either a student loan is really meant to be paid off by the parents, despite the fact that it is called a student loan, or Brown is quietly putting an undue loan-burden on certain students under the guise of meeting 100 percent of demonstrated financial need. I suspect the latter is true, and I believe that most students would agree.
Graham Anderson '10 lives in a dizzying web of contradictions
