“Stanford offers admission to 2,144 students, expands financial aid program”, the press release stated. While its acceptance rate was almost half that of our own school, the second part of the headline was what drew my attention. The leadership of the Stanford financial aid office announced that they will raise the amount of money an applicant’s family could earn while still paying zero dollars towards tuition; now, parents of the class of 2019 students can make up to $125,000 per year and still pay solely for room and board, a $25,000 increase from the previous year’s cutoff.

The Internet was quick to respond. Countless friends shared various articles covering the policy change, expressing their desire for their own alma mater to make such generous financial aid gifts. They have good reason to do so; unsubsidized, Stanford costs approximately $65,000 per year, one fifth more than the average American family earns in the same period of time. With tuition increasing constantly and showing no signs of slowing down, it is only logical that universities concerned about continuing to attract the most qualified students increase financial aid awards, especially when even small differences in them can influence admitted students’ final college choice.

As the eager protégé walking in the footsteps of Stanford’s wise monk, Duke also responded to its role model’s well-publicized act. An April 9 article in this newspaper notes that our own endowment, at one-third the size of Stanford’s, simply cannot sustain that level of generosity. Duke admissions are need-blind, or made without credence given to an applicant’s ability to pay, but officials have only publicly declared people earning less than $60,000 a year to be fully exempt from paying for tuition. Because of its larger financial resources, older and wealthier schools are simply better able to offer generous aid packages to people from all walks of life.

Though I commend the cardinals or trees, whatever their mascot actually is, on their efforts to make the obscenely high price of an elite private education as small an obstacle as possible to potential students of all backgrounds, something remains missing from conversations about college affordability. In reality, financial aid should only be one part of a larger effort to open a university’s doors to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. For now, Stanford, Duke and all of the U.S. News and World Report’s darlings remain institutions consisting primarily of the extremely wealthy. Look more closely at the financial aid statistics, for instance. At Stanford, according to The College Board, just more than half of applicants even receive financial aid in the first place. That number is even lower here at Duke. Considering such information in addition to the fact that some combination of grants, loans and work-study is available to Stanford students with a family income of around $225,000 and Dukie households earning at least $160,000, it’s clear the majority of students attending such schools are extremely well off. In other words, some rough arithmetic reveals approximately half of Duke and Stanford students hail from households earning at least three times what the average American family does.

I do not intend to disparage Duke and its peer institutions’ efforts to make college accessible to members of the middle and upper classes, but I cannot help but feel administrators’ efforts are directed towards the wrong end of the income spectrum. Granted, $65,000 is an incomprehensible sum to all but the wealthiest citizens of the world, but couldn’t financial aid dollars that now slightly subsidize the educations of a dozen already privileged Duke students instead fully fund someone whose family lives below the poverty line? Most schools are particularly generous towards their poorest students—those attending Duke are awarded an average of $53,000 each year, according to our admissions website—but admit few of them. A Chronicle column called “I came to Duke with an empty wallet” and the responses it has inspired reveal just how frequently money and socioeconomic status are taken for granted at this university. The author herself mentions this school’s “amazing financial aid”, but the number of beneficiaries is low. Statistics regarding universities’ economic diversity are difficult to track down, but according to U.S. News and World.

Report (http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/economic-diversity-among-top-ranked-schools), Pell grant recipients, who generally come from poor families, make up only 14 percent of Duke’s student body, a proportion about one-third that of the University of California, Los Angeles and half that of Columbia University, two other reputable colleges. In short, it seems that Duke has chosen to give small quantities of aid to many students instead of large sums to needier ones.

In order to become a more diverse community and continue our “quest for social justice”, as President Richard Brodhead wrote in a 2006 summary of Duke’s strategic plan, we should not aspire to ape Stanford’s actions simply by increasing the maximum amount of money one’s family can earn before becoming ineligible for aid. Instead, we should seek to bolster existing efforts to recruit students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ensure they can graduate debt-free. The creation of a Director of Outreach and Access position within the financial aid office and the 1G pre-orientation program, resources that serve first-generation college students, are a start, but they are not enough. Top students come from all income brackets, not just those whose members need only a small loan to make Duke affordable.

Tom Vosburgh is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.