more on what we won (and didn't win) last thursday

first of all, the fact that we won something on last thursday was in itself a victory. the fact that exactly a week after we sat in the admissions office, and a week and two days after we asked difficult questions at the forum, and in the midst of a campaign involving thousands of students, parents, alumnae/i, and other supporters at yale, levin announced a significant move forward, was great. there was no waiting until the summer or until after another round of SCAFA meetings or until last week's press had ended. there was significant movement on our timeline. (i have to ask, does SCAFA even really exist? because once the extent to which we were for real was apparent, i sure never heard anyone defer to it or even mention it again.)

by my count, we won three and a fraction things from the UOC platform. we won a decreased family contribution for low-income families, increased recruiting in low-income areas (let's make sure that it actually happens), and yearly trips home for international students. the fraction of an item we won is financial aid for summer study-abroad programs, which addresses some sliver of the concerns in our "summer" bulletpoint. in a broader sense, then, we've gotten what we asked for in terms of increasing economic diversity; we've gotten a couple of small pieces of what we want in terms of decreasing the burden on students, though the large piece of halving the self-help remains; and we haven't gotten anything in terms of increasing the transparency and accessibility of the financial aid office, although my sense is that we could definitely win updates to the SFS website, financial aid training for freshman counselors, and a financial aid info session by the end of the semester.

and the things we won are by no means minor. harvard's economic-diversity initiative increased fee-waiver requests by nearly 50 percent, and it also increased the number of african-american applicants by over 28 percent. if, as tom conroy says, yale's new plan affects 15 percent of yale applicants, then that's some 750 current students (and in the future significantly more, it is to be hoped) as well as prospective students from more than half of the households in the united states for whom yale is going to be significantly more affordable, and that's wonderful.

and--we haven't really put this out there yet, but i think it's important that we do--i think we've won significant ideological concessions from the university as well. last summer's alumnae/i magazine saw levin, in a q&a entitled "yale and the poor" (yes, really), having "mixed feelings" about harvard's financial aid initiative. levin says, "I wonder whether it is in fact a step forward to say, 'Now it's free.' In my view, families ought to have a stake, however small, in their children's education." but now yale has made the step forward (even $5000 forward of harvard) and acknowledged, in terms of policy if not explicitly, that for a family to "have a stake. . . in their children's education," they don't necessarily need to be doling out money. and so yale's whole messed-up notion of "coinvestment" begins to fall apart.

and this brings me to the not-wonderful thing, which is that around 40 percent of yale students are still required to contribute around $6500 per year to their educations, through summer earnings, loans, and term-time work, while the rest of students are not. and, yes, i'm still one of those people, and one of the students for whose family the recent reforms made no direct difference, given the relatively high salaries of unionized public-school teachers in rochester that put my family slightly out of the affected range. but we've blown apart the university's notion of the parent contribution, so there's no reason why we can't blow apart the university's notion of the student contribution--that for students on financial aid to be adequately invested in their education they need to pay $6500 per year--as well. if we're going to send a clear signal to low-income families about affordability, then we also need to send a clear signal to all students on financial aid about equality of experience. the call for equality of access, experience, and opportunity hasn't changed.