Twenty-two hundred dollars is a big jump in the cost of Yale tuition—3.98 percent to be exact—but this article is about the $100. While at first it may seem a minute, relatively inconsequential change, in the eyes of many students it reveals a disconcerting trend.
A term-time job is work that students must do in some capacity on campus in order to earn part of their financial aid package. According to Caesar Storlazzi, Yale’s director of financial aid, the average term-time job commitment this year for a student on financial aid at Yale is eight to 10 hours a week.
“It means you have 10 hours less time per week to devote to your studies or to devote to extracurricular pursuits,” Diana Rosen, PC ’16, who has written two columns for the Yale Daily News about the experience of being a Yale student on financial aid, said in an interview. The University calls this a student’s “self-help contribution,” and Storlazzi echoed this language of personal advancement. “We do think that having a hand in the financial aid picture actually is a good thing for students, training for life after graduation,” he said. “There is an investment of time, not an onerous one, toward that student’s self help.”
Yale, it should be noted, has a robust financial aid system. Fifty five percent of undergraduates receive aid from the University, and the average grant for the 2012-13 school year tops $39,000. Families who make less than $65,000 per year pay nothing, and Yale meets 100 percent of demonstrated need.
Perhaps in an effort not to tarnish this sterling report card, the University announced the changes to next year’s budget in a whisper: it was posted in a bulletin on the YaleNews website—not an especially popular destination for Yale undergraduates when web-surfing—on Mar. 12. No email was sent announcing the changes. Moreover, most students were off- campus for spring break, far away from Yale’s ivy towers. “The decision to release the information then disenfranchised a student voice,” Yoni Greenwood, BR ‘15, said. Greenwood is a member of Students Unite Now (SUN), a campus student group whose goal, according to its Facebook page, is to “unite to change our university, our city, and our world.” But SUN had no opportunity to organize a discussion on the decision because many of its organizers, along with most Yale students, were not around to talk.
“It’s a big decision that has a really large effect on the student body,” said Greenwood, “and it was made when most students weren’t on campus to comment on it and to talk about it and to think about it.” Other students echoed this concern. “I thought the timing of the announcement was problematic,” Alejandro Gutierrez, CC ’13, said. YaleNews did send out an email on Mar. 12., but it neglected to mention the change. Instead, the lead story of that email reported, “Infants prefer individuals who punish those not like themselves.”
Storlazzi unambiguously denied the claim that the University had specifically chosen to release this information at a time when students would not be on campus to react. “The timing was pure coincidence,” he said. “We make the announcement as soon as we can, and all these decisions are being made and weighed and balanced against the University’s budget over January, February, and March. Would we like to see those numbers broadcast earlier? Sure, but we do it as soon as we can.”
For many students on financial aid, the problem was not just the way in which the University publicized the changes. Rather, they voiced disappointment over the content of the reforms for next year, citing the time pressure created by term-time jobs. Rosen explained that the student contribution for her financial aid package was covered this year by a private, outside scholarship, but she worried about the prospect of balancing her time next year with a term-time job once her private scholarship expires.
At the beginning of last semester, Rosen worked at an organization outside Yale called Vote Mob, an organization that rallied support for Chris Murphy’s senate campaign. The work was unrelated to her private scholarship or Yale’s work requirements, but she put in 10 hours a week at Vote Mob, a roughly equivalent amount of time to that which will be required next year for her term-time commitment. “That was a lot,” she said. “It was hard, and I definitely am concerned about that going into next year. I know it means that I’m going to have to cut back somewhere, whether its on free time with friends, or with the amount of time I spend on classes, or on extracurriculars.”
The actual change in time commitment created by the extra $100 is relatively small, amounting to less than 10 more hours of work over the course of a school year, or roughly one more hour of work per month. But any increase in time commitment, Gutierrez claimed, is bad policy. “It’s astonishing the ways this policy creates a different Yale experience dependent on class,” he said. “Oftentimes reputations are measured by extracurricular activities, but people who have to work jobs because they have no other choice don’t get to fully have that part of the Yale experience.”
Storlazzi agreed that looking forward he would be wary of increasing the term-time work contribution. Since 2008, the amount of money that students must earn has risen $800, from $2,500 in the 2008-2009 year up to $3,300 next year. “Are we getting to a point now where if we increase it anymore, [it would] be difficult for students?” Storlazzi said. “Possibly.”
Yet while some students feel that open discussion about Yale’s financial aid policy has been lacking, Yale College has begun to set up a wider infrastructure around financial aid. This spring administrators announced the establishment of a five-week summer program for incoming low-income freshmen—as well as first-generation college students—in order to soften the adjustment to life at the University. In 2004, Yale established the student ambassador program in order to recruit low-income high schoolers to apply to Yale College. The ambassador program sends Yale undergraduates to high schools in low-income areas near their hometowns in order to inform students of the financial aid opportunities Yale provides.
Andrew Wang, SM ’16, visited two high schools just outside of Los Angeles through the ambassador program, and he felt that the program was reflective of Yale’s earnest interest in recruiting a more socioeconomically diverse applicant pool. “A lot of people have preconceptions that Yale is this distant place that is really expensive and inaccessible,” he said, “Based on my visit I think I drastically changed a lot of those preconceptions, so I think it was successful in that regard.”
At the two high schools Wang visited over spring break, one in a markedly poorer area than the other, he noticed that the students at the less affluent school were distinctly more receptive to his presentation. “There were clearly a lot of kids who perked up when they heard that if your family makes less than $65,000 Yale will cover your whole education.”
Other students similarly touted the student ambassador program as a reflection of Yale’s desire to make financial aid concerns a priority. “I can’t think of a better way for Yale to reach out to low-income kids,” Karl Xia, SM ’16, said. Xia also visited two high schools over spring break near his hometown of Canton, Ohio. “They literally have a fleet of eager and willing foot soldiers traveling to high schools across the country to talk about how accessible the college is for low-income high schoolers,” said Xia, “That’s pretty good, I think.”
Nonetheless, Gutierrez said he felt that there is an issue in the way Yale approaches financial aid in its budget. “I’m not sure what the University’s priorities are when it comes to spending,” he said. Rosen echoed this concern. “I think it’s somewhat misleading that Yale sets itself up as this place that is accessible for students of any race, of any sexuality, any gender, and now any economic class, but then for those students to be told that when they come here, ‘Well, you’re lower class. You’re going to have to work for your education.’” She hastened to add that she doesn’t have a problem with the idea of working for money during college, but argued that the fact that only Yale’s lower-income students must spend 10 hours a week working creates an imbalance on campus and propagates a problematic culture. “I think the problem is when it’s only the bottom half of the population that has to do it,” she said. “Then it creates a class divide.”
Storlazzi acknowledged the fact that the term-time work requirement eliminates a degree of free time from the schedules of Yale students on financial aid. “A student who doesn’t have to work has more hours in the day,” he said. But he struck a note of realism. “There’s a basic unfairness in the world, and that’s not going to go away,” Storlazzi said. “But again, we don’t think that the 10-hour average weekly commitment adversely impacts a financial aid student. In fact, we think it helps them connect to the University in a different, more meaningful way.”
Perhaps this is so, but it is also true that term-time work contributions further cramp schedules that many Yale students feel are already packed with social, academic, and extracurricular commitments. In the past six months, both Rosen and Gutierrez have written columns in the Yale Daily News about the financial aid culture at Yale, and they both said that having an open conversation about financial aid issues at Yale is the best way to effect change. They added that open discussion of issues regarding financial aid was important not just for the students whose daily lives are impacted by financial aid reforms, but also in determining the texture of Yale’s culture when it comes to class.
“I think people feel weird talking about class on this campus,” Rosen said. “But I think it’s wrong to feel indebted to the university because of the financial aid package that you’re given and to feel that they’re in some way purchasing your silence. It shouldn’t be a $40,000 grant to keep your mouth shut.”