Recently, the issue of restoring need-blind admissions has been a heated topic of debate among students and members of the faculty. I do not support major cuts to housing options, reduction of staff, or raising tuition and loan levels for the sake of increasing financial aid and restoring need-blind. The school’s budget dilemna has already influenced student activities, academics, and campus life. Eliminating need-blind is simply a trade-off, a concession, to improve the current school’s financial situation. It does not mean that need-blind is not important; it is still a goal that Wesleyan shall achieve in the long run.
Wesleyan has been short on professors, which has had an impact on the number of available courses. The class size of 30-50 students, especially in the economics department, is relatively larger than other liberal arts colleges. Course selection has been a salient problem, at least from my observation. Often times, courses end up being overenrolled, or students have to take them in a different semester than that for which they’d originally planned. The school is also not financially capable of paying the popular professors to open more than one section of their courses or add one more course throughout the semester. All these issues are affecting the academic commitment of dedicated faculty members and students, as well as the very philosophy that Wesleyan is designed with: the close interaction between students and professors and the liberal exploration of academics. Perhaps in response to this, Wesleyan’s rank in U.S. News & World Report dropped from 12 last year to 17 this year.
According to the record from the Student Budgetary Committee, most financial requests from student groups and activities are not met or fully met. For example, Resonance Journal, a student-run publication in the East Asian Studies department, faces losing all budget for its future printing and distribution. For the class History of Taiwan the professor meant to take students to panels in Amherst and New York City but was forced to cancel the plan because the budget request was not approved.
Raising tuition is not a wise choice. It means that the students who do not receive financial aid have to pay more for the sake of other unknown students to enter Wesleyan, and at the same time they will not necessarily receive a better quality education to offset the additional payment. It is not fair.
If Wesleyan is not capable of fully supporting its current students, how can it count on its graduates to give back to the Wesleyan community and attract more students to apply? The principle here is to ensure the quality of education offered to the enrolled students and prospective students, which is beneficial for increasing Wesleyan endowment rate. Until the financial and operational difficulty is solved, restoring need-blind should not be our first priority.
Only time will tell if the need-aware policy will have a negative effect on the application rate to Wesleyan and the quality of the enrolled student body. A need-aware policy does not mean a one hundred percent rejection rate of those academically capable but financially underprivileged students; it allows more space for the admissions office to consider deliberately the cost of affording these students: both the benefits they will receive and the benefits they will bring to the University.