In the wake of one of the most devastating economic downturns of the last several decades, Tufts administrators and admissions personnel have begun to prepare themselves for what could be one of the largest groups of students requiring financial aid in recent memory.
Though the university budget for the 2010-2011 academic year has yet to be set, the state of the economy of the last year has left those closest to the issue of undergraduate financial aid speculating about the size of the financial aid budget and how much of an increase would be doable.
Regardless of how the admissions process plays out, however, administrators stressed that retaining existing students would take precedence over increasing aid for the incoming class.
"It makes no sense to say, ‘Oops, sorry, we can't afford you anymore,'" Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin said. "That's the essential part of this whole story — what do we do to protect our current enrollment."
Executive Administrative Dean for the School of Arts and Sciences Leah McIntosh agreed that the university prioritized meeting the financial needs of enrolled students.
"It is Tufts' policy to meet demonstrated need of admitted students, even if that need changes after the student has matriculated," she said.
That policy came into play the last fiscal year, the first affected by the recession, when an additional 100 upperclassmen were awarded aid for the 2009-2010 academic year.
"We knew [last year] that the current group was going to have unprecedented levels of need," Coffin said. "I had said, ‘this is going to be really, really ugly.'"
To meet this need, the trustees approved a 12 percent increase in the financial aid budget — the only increase in the overall budget for this academic year — a number they hoped would be enough to not only provide aid to all upperclassmen requiring it, but also for the incoming freshman class.
According to Coffin, however, this hope did not pan out. "Every penny of that increase was absorbed by sophomores, juniors and seniors," he said.
This meant that despite changes in the economy, the level of aid for incoming freshman did not increase from the previous year.
Some are fearful that the same situation could play out this year for the incoming freshman class.
Senior Adam Weldai, a trustee representative on the Tufts Community Union Senate and a student member of the Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Committee, expressed his concern that this would have long-term repercussions.
"We don't want admissions to have a flat budget [for freshman financial aid] again," he said. "It could affect not just this freshman class, but also other freshman classes in the future. It would be a strategic and wise decision to increase the budget so we can maintain the sort of socioeconomic diversity we have here at Tufts."
The Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Committee is comprised of faculty, students and administrators. It offers admissions-related recommendations on what it thinks is the best course of action to university administrators.
The issue of the relationship between aid levels and socioeconomic diversity is not lost on committee chair George McNinch, associate professor of mathematics.
"The academic profile of the incoming class has gone up and the socioeconomic diversity has improved," he said. "We've had some gains in those areas. We don't want to lose that."
According to Weldai, McNinch and other committee members recently drafted and sent a letter to University President Lawrence Bacow, Provost Jamshed Bharucha, Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell, Dean of Arts & Sciences Robert Sternberg and Dean of Engineering Linda Abriola offering their support for an increase in the financial aid budget.
In their letter, the committee members expressed their hope that aid for the incoming class would not remain level, as it was this past year. They also recognized, however, the tough budget decisions that await administrators.
Still, according to Coffin, the debate is not whether or not the financial aid budget should be increased, but where the money for such an increase will come from.
"[Bacow] absolutely agreed with us, but you can't spend what you don't have," he said.
Determining the suitable size of an increase further complicates budgetary decisions and student tax returns may not be sufficient gauge.
"What does a full year of economic crisis do to our budget?" Coffin said. "Some people are recovering, some are getting worse. How do we absorb those changes?"
Only one fiscal quarter of 2008 tax returns, which was used to determine last year's financial aid, was affected by the economic decline. This year, students will be sending in tax returns for 2009, when all four quarters were mired in the recession.
Administrators are currently unsure about how much aid existing students will need because the deadline for financial aid applications is later this spring.
Despite these concerns, Coffin expressed his confidence that meeting the needs of existing students would not negatively affect the standards of the incoming freshmen class.
"I look at the pool as we're reading it and the quality is as strong as it's ever been," he said. "I don't anticipate that the Class of 2014 will look any different than the Class of 2013 or 2012."
Coffin added that it was important to recognize the priorities of the current moment.
"There is a sense in the admissions game that we always have to provide more, be faster, be better, but right now we're in a time where we have to preserve," he said. "You take the core of what we've created and preserve it."
