Hooray for MetaEzra

[Josh '99]

From today's posting titled "Cornell Has Dropped Enhanced Financial Aid For Athletes":

The good news, however, is that Cornell does not appear to have been restricted from offering enhanced financial aid to select non-athletes. Which means there should be no reason why we can't continue to have the best marching band in the Ivy League.

You're goddamn right we do.

[mnagowski]

Heh. Thanks for the shout out.

[Rosey]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: either Cornell figures out a way to reduce tuition across the board (that is, in a non-discriminatory way with regard to athletes/non-athletes) or it loses its ability to compete for the best athletes as the richer schools in the league charge less and less.  Witness the recent rise of Yale as an ECAC hockey power (such as it is).

Here's an interesting comparison from Cornell's department of planning and budget:

http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000213.pdf

Note the widening gap between Yale/Princeton and Cornell, and Cornell's near-$2000 jump between 07-08 and 08-09.  And this is just the full-freight price: my understanding is that the other schools are willing and able to steepen the contribution curve such that students from even upper-middle class families pay close to nothing.  The $2214 difference between Cornell and Princeton may not seem like a whole lot compared to the total cost, but (a) it adds up over 4 years and (b) Cornell's already fighting an uphill battle for the best students and the best athletes against its more prestigious brethren, whether we like to admit that uncomfortable truth or not.

[imafrshmn]

If the atheltic recruiting aid disparities continue in the Ivy League, so be it.  Academics can't take a back seat to athletics, ever.

[Al DeFlorio]

If the atheltic recruiting aid disparities continue in the Ivy League, so be it.  Academics can't take a back seat to athletics, ever.

Wrestling, lacrosse, hockey, and basketball seem to be surviving.

[mnagowski]

If the atheltic recruiting aid disparities continue in the Ivy League, so be it.  Academics can't take a back seat to athletics, ever.

Wrestling, lacrosse, hockey, and basketball seem to be surviving.

The deeper issue is that the aid packages affect more than just the athletes -- they affect everybody. So if Princeton is making aid packages to middle-class students that Cornell can't even touch, the academic caliber of Cornell will be pressured.

A lot of our sports are more than surviving -- they are thriving. However, it's fair to say that the dynasty teams of the last four years were largely recruited prior to Harvard & Co. really upping the ante in the aid department. So we need to see what the next five years bring. The fact that Yale and Princeton have started to furnish some decent hockey teams may foreshadow future changes.

[Al DeFlorio]

If the atheltic recruiting aid disparities continue in the Ivy League, so be it.  Academics can't take a back seat to athletics, ever.

Wrestling, lacrosse, hockey, and basketball seem to be surviving.

The deeper issue is that the aid packages affect more than just the athletes -- they affect everybody. So if Princeton is making aid packages to middle-class students that Cornell can't even touch, the academic caliber of Cornell will be pressured.

I agree that this is the key issue.  I'm tired of Noel whining about this publicly.  He's supposed to be a senior executive, and whining is not how to get things in an organization.

Wrestling, lacrosse, and hockey seem to be continuing to recruit successfully, by the way.  Look at next year's incoming wrestling class.  No one ever said it would be easy.

[mnagowski]

I agree that this is the key issue. I'm tired of Noel whining about this publicly. He's supposed to be a senior executive, and whining is not how to get things in an organization.

Just imagine all of the bickering inside the Ivy League office.

[Trotsky]

I agree that this is the key issue.  I'm tired of Noel whining about this publicly.  He's supposed to be a senior executive, and whining is not how to get things in an organization.

Publicly whining may be a tactic to apply pressure.

It would be great to see the real numbers, but it looks like the issue is roughly:  

Level 1: Up to some magic "middle class" number for parental income (I dunno, $200k?) the packages and the recruiting incentive are the same.

Level 2: For some interval above that (say 200-400), Cornell aid shades off in comparison with HYP.

Level 3: Above some magic "upper middle class" number (400), the Idle Rich pay with pin money, so once again no discrepancy.

Level 2 is probably a very large chunk, even a plurality, of the overall Ivy population.  As the most attractive candidates from that group are snapped up by HYP, what happens?  There are A LOT more qualified candidates than HYP slots, so the net effect is either to shift the mean parental income of Cornell students lower -- which means Cornell wouldn't realize any increase in revenue (a self-defeating policy, and so by the Law of Conservation of Irony almost certainly what happens), or replacement by other slightly less attractive yet still qualified Level 2 candidates who make it in over (presumably less attractive, unless Cornell has a tuition-conscious thumb on the scale) Level 1 candidates.

Is the difference really that significant between, say, the 5th and 15th most attractive X in Level 2?  If X = Goalie, yes.  Cellist, probably.  Engineer or English major?  Nah, the pools are just so much bigger and flatter.

I doubt it hurts us much, if at all, academically (it may have a salutary effect of letting a few more proles into Ithaca, and god knows it needs them).

Athletically, it probably hurts like a bitch.

[Al DeFlorio]

Publicly whining may be a tactic to apply pressure.

Whining in public is a lousy management tactic if you're trying to influence your own senior management.  It makes you look impotent and transparent, while pissing off your bosses.  You build your case internally and recruit influential stakeholders privately to support your position.

[Trotsky]

Whining in public is a lousy management tactic if you're trying to influence your own senior management.  It makes you look impotent and transparent, while pissing off your bosses.  You build your case internally and recruit influential stakeholders privately to support your position.

I didn't say it was a good tactic.  You see it all the time when things get political.  Or Andy may just not be very professional.

[Al DeFlorio]

Whining in public is a lousy management tactic if you're trying to influence your own senior management.  It makes you look impotent and transparent, while pissing off your bosses.  You build your case internally and recruit influential stakeholders privately to support your position.

I didn't say it was a good tactic.  You see it all the time when things get political.  Or Andy may just not be very professional.

That was my point above.

Another thought on the general topic:  Princeton's endowment per student is such that a "keeping-up-with-Princeton's-aid-packages" strategy would eventually put Cornell out of business.

[Rosey]

Another thought on the general topic:  Princeton's endowment per student is such that a "keeping-up-with-Princeton's-aid-packages" strategy would eventually put Cornell out of business.

That was exactly my point, and has been on this topic for many years.  I have no serious skin in the game, so I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it; I'm simply curious to see how Cornell resolves the issue over time because from this vantage point Cornell doesn't have a whole lot of options: it either figures out how to stay competitive or it stops being competitive, at least in that "level 2" category from Greg's analysis.

[Trotsky]

Huge difference.

Not really sure how you compete with that.  For family income of $160k

Cornell: $50k
Harvard: $20k
Yale: $20k

I love my alma mater, but, no contest. ::wow::

[Rosey]

Huge difference.

Not really sure how you compete with that.  For family income of $160k

Cornell: $50k
Harvard: $20k
Yale: $20k

I love my alma mater, but, no contest. ::wow::

The bottom line is that Cornell can't compete for students whose parents are in the $40K to (at least) $200K range.  It can compete for the (relatively) very poor and the very rich.  Boy, that's what Cornell needs: an even *more* bimodal distribution between the working class kids and the trust fund kids.