Tue 26 Feb 2008
Wick Sloane ‘76 writes:
Having trouble finding out who decides what percentage of the student body at any given university should be on scholarship? Or how many students will have Pell Grants? Or that tuition will rise, again? Who decides, as Williams College just did, to tear down a sound student center and to build another, with tax-deducted dollars, while raising tuition? Well, how about asking the trustees who decides?
Good stuff. I rarely bother the trustees or Morty because they are busy people with better things to do than consider my opinions. But, Record reporters have a right and obligation to bother them all the time. Although the Trustees delegate most decisions to the Administration, they are involved in all the large issues. A good example was the move to a no loans financial aid policy while simultaneously refusing to meet the generosity of competitor schools like Harvard and Princeton. Consider some comments on WSO:
Wait, so a Harvard family making $120k/yr only has to to pay $12k? That’s incredibly generous. I know a lot of kids here at Williams whose families make substantially less than that and yet still pay the full $45k or very close to it.
my brother went to dartmouth & they offered him a significantly better aid package than i receive.
i think i get a real shitty deal here compared to what harvard aid offers - - who else feels the same? this is a serious matter - if we want boyer and morty to offer a better deal to middle class families, we have to demand it!
Indeed. The Record ought to do a multiple article story on financial aid at Williams. Who gets how much and why? Do most applicants admitted to Williams get better deals from places like Harvard? And, once the Record has the facts, it ought to ask the Trustees why the policy is what it is.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
These “I know a friend of a friend” stories about financial aid are worse than useless. Every situation is different and anyone who thinks they can predict financial aid packages without seeing the whole picture is just kidding himself.
For example, the “kids here at Williams whose families make substantially less than that” may also have half million dollar trust funds from grandma to pay for college.
The real question to ask is what is the percetage of full-fare customers? And, why does Williams’ management target a higher percentage of full-fare customers than most of its competitors? Remember, Nesbitt and the admissions officers are experienced professionals who get the class Morty tells them to get.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
David, many of your posts recently end with advice to student reporters from The Record to do an investigative story on some topic or another. Is that really what The Record does?? As far as relations with the administration go, I’ve always viewed The Record as a collective stenographer, not investigator (cue Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner: “Make, announce, type”). Since when do Williams students want to rock the boat so much?
February 26th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!
February 26th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Well, now I’m really confused. I thought a ‘trustee’ was someone in a closed environment with special privileges granted by the authorities that ran the place.
I would think that their answers might be suspect. Particularly about money, And if they are male (or purport to be), watch out! At least that is my take-away from previous discussions tapped out at night hear on the grapevine.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Oh, hey there Dick?
I wanted to tell you about a particular study I heard about…It’s called the Oregon Paradigm (now, don’t misunderstand…that is OrEgOn with an e, and an o). Anyway, they have found that men from Oregon (excluding Portland, where CG is), are lyin, cheatin, slanderous, plagiarizing, sexist swine…
Have you heard about this? I think David is planning a post about it soon as he’s bored with the Willy blah, blah, blah thread.
So interesting! [: )]
February 26th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Forgive the segway, everyone, but I knew Dick would want to know about the Oregon study.
Now back to the Trustees. Of which I have nothing controversial to say. I agree with all of you about everything.
February 26th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Just Me writes:
Depends. Some Record editors do not hard questions. But others make endless trouble, often to good effect. Mike Needham ‘04 and his reporters drove several stories during his era, e.g. parking and the placement of the artificial field.
I have high hopes for Kevin Waite ‘09 and his staff. Time will tell.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Froshmama,
Indeed, the study is famous in our cou des bois for its internal reliability using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, Cronbach’s alpha, the Spearman-Brown prediction formula, and my own personal favorite, the Kuder-Richardson Formula.
So while the base was admittedly small (…1), it’s reliability has earned it the sobriquet ‘the sweetheart of Sigma Five’.
Of course, this was prior to the abolishment of fraternities.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:22 am
hwc: I’m not sure whether I know “lots of kids” fitting that description, because I’m not intimately familiar with the financial situations of most of my friends, but I can say that I personally do fall into that category. My parents have always made significantly less than $100k, I have no trust fund other than what my parents have been able to save, and yet Williams expects us to pay the full $45k. You can debate whether my family “deserves” more financial aid from Williams, but the fact of the matter is that if Harvard and Stanford had instituted their new aid policies at the time of college decision process, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that I would have chosen Williams. Since this year’s prospective students do have the benefit of such generous competing offers, it seem quite plausible that some of them will turn down Williams for Harvard or Stanford based on superior financial aid. Whether there are enough of those students to make it worth Williams’ money to try and play with the big boys, I don’t know, but I hope someone’s thinking about it.