With the cost of higher education increasing and budget constraints limiting access to financial aid, the danger of shutting out talented and qualified students is ever looming. For these reasons, we applaud the University’s new partnership with Say Yes to Education—a non-profit group that helps underprivileged students pay for college.
Becoming a member institution will not prompt any changes to the University’s financial aid system—Duke already ensures full tuition to any accepted student whose annual family income falls below $75,000, an assurance it will continue under the Say Yes to Education program.
Despite this fact, participation in the program yields two principle benefits, both of which revolve around spreading information.
The first benefit goes to underprivileged students—the Say Yes to Education program helps equalize access to higher education by informing students about financial aid programs that can make a seemingly unaffordable degree affordable, if not free. With Duke now a member, students who would normally not look beyond Duke’s $225,000 price tag may now expand their options.
The second benefit is to the University itself. The program, with its established networks and resources, will help Duke spread its name to a demographic of highly talented students that it lacked the means to reach beforehand. Such publicity will presumably lead to an increase in applicants, which in turn could improve socioeconomic diversity on campus. In this sense, the University’s participation may not be wholly altruistic.
Although it is encouraging that the University made this step to appeal to a wider array of students, Duke should not become complacent. Participation in programs such as Say Yes to Education and providing aid are the first steps to equalizing access to higher education. But in so doing, care should be taken to also accommodate middle class students who may be crowded out by constrained financial aid resources on one end and rising tuition costs on the other.
Although we commend Say Yes to Education and other similar programs for their efforts to provide equal access to higher education, there is still a larger systemic problem that needs to be addressed—namely, equal access to education in general. Helping high achieving, underprivileged high school students obtain a college degree is important, but so is helping high achieving middle class school students obtain a good high school education and helping primary school students obtain a good middle school education, and so on so forth. To ensure true equality in access to higher education, education on every level must be addressed.
There are multiple ways of providing improved opportunities across the board—the University could become more involved in the Durham public school system, offer summer programs and students could volunteer their time to tutor at local schools. Many of these measures are already widely practiced, and the University and students alike should continue to improve access not only to higher education, but also primary education.
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