The Scholarship Shrinkage

Squeezed by money problems, U.S. campuses from Yale to Vanderbilt are trimming scholarships for needy students, who now must borrow more, work more or quit college. The University of Pennsylvania is an agonized example. In the past 13 years, scholarships have grown faster than any single item in its budget--from $2 million to $14 million. They have helped Penn to increase its mix of black and poor students. But Penn is running a $1.9 million budget deficit. As a result, it is eliminating 57 of the 867 scholarships it now offers freshmen.

Even though the cuts are still relatively modest, they have incensed Penn's dean of admissions and financial aide, George A. Schlekat, 33, himself a full-scholarship student at Penn twelve years ago. Last week Schlekat resigned in protest, calling the policy "suicidal." Penn President Martin Meyerson is tightening up sharply in other areas besides scholarships; he is seeking to save by imposing a ban on new faculty hiring. But Schlekat argues that the administration could have made further sacrifices to help needy students, particularly in the university's "rather grand research facilities." Schlekat is certain that the reductions will affect Penn's "heterogeneity."

Schlekat and Meyerson agree that the long-range solution is more federal aid for colleges, but that is hardly close at hand. Neither, in fact, is heterogeneity in U.S. higher education. Despite all the recent efforts to enroll minority-group students, a forthcoming report by the Ford Foundation says that the number of black students will have to increase by 116% before black and white America have the same proportion of their children in college. For other minorities the gap is still more dramatic. If they are to pull abreast of whites, enrollment of Puerto Ricans will have to grow by 225%, Mexican Americans by 330% and American Indians by 650%.

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