Sustaining socioeconomic diversity

In November Duke announced its newest financial aid initiative, The Washington Duke Scholarship Program, aimed at improving the experience of first-generation students and those coming from under-resources backgrounds. We applauded Duke for looking to not only increase our student body’s socioeconomic diversity but to offer resources to the students who choose to come here. While we will have to wait for some years and more fundraising for that program to scale up, it was announced last week that Duke has become the 37th university to partner with QuestBridge—a program that allows high-achieving, low-income students to apply to a coalition of top universities with the chance to earn a full scholarship and financial and advising support along the way.

A QuestBridge partnership will help Duke with exposure to low-income students. Young compared to many of our academic peers, Duke is often passed over by low-income students looking at elite institutions with greater financial aid capabilities. Students in that demographic who use QuestBridge’s College Match scholarship program, however, have their application automatically forwarded to Duke and are given priority consideration for funded trips to campus, better connecting them with the University.

In addition to launching the Washington Duke Scholars and QuestBridge partnership, Duke recently announced the Access and Opportunity Challenge fund. The challenge allows donors to give money to Duke that would be matched by outside foundations, all contributing to our ability to award students need-based financial aid. Unsurprisingly, the cost of covering need-based financial aid is not constant over time for Duke. In the last ten years, that cost has skyrocketed from $43 million in 2005 to $99 million 2015. We have written in the past on the importance of socioeconomic diversity on campus, and we hope that fundraising like Duke Forward is able to keep up with this rising cost of support as programs like the Washington Duke Scholars and QuestBridge attract students who demonstrate financial need.

While the scholarship programs and financial aid challenge fund are welcome news, they highlight the colossal, ever-increasing cost of attendance at Duke and at colleges across the country. In 1984, Duke’s cost of attendance was around $10,000; twenty years later, it has risen to be more than $67,000. It is very difficult to claim that the education a Duke student receives in four years is worth nearly seven times more today than it was in 1984. While there are natural increases in our University’s administration and development as well as in the national economy, the jump finds some explanation in the growth of Duke’s non-educational expenses: the hiring of additional administrators, the construction of ornate glass box facilities, the expansion of Student Affairs and the addition of countless peripheral services, some of which are necessary and some of which are not.

Perhaps in an effort to keep up with rival institutions, Duke has adopted a policy of constant growth, pouring money into swollen non-academic departments. While it seems the American way to encourage sustained growth year after year, there certainly seems to be diminishing returns for students and greatly increasing costs. This is hardly unique to Duke however, and some confluence of factors in the national landscape of higher education have encouraged the status quo that burdens students and their families.

As Duke continues to preach a mission of attracting low-income students who will be able to capitalize on their Duke experience, it also continues to find good ways to financially support their time here. Yet the deeper problem of frightening tuition numbers cannot be ignored.