Some colleges aim financial aid at a declining market: students in the middle class
一些大学将经济援助瞄准了一个衰落的市场：中产阶级学生
WATERVILLE, Maine — For Emily Kayser, the prospect of covering her son’s college tuition on a teacher’s salary is “scary. It’s very stressful.” To pay for it, “I’m thinking, what can I sell?”
缅因州沃特维尔——对于艾米丽·凯瑟来说，用老师的工资支付儿子的大学学费的前景“很可怕。压力很大。”为了付钱，“我在想，我能卖什么？”
Kayser, who was touring Colby College with her high school-age son, Matt, is among the many Americans in the middle who earn too much to qualify for need-based financial aid, but not enough to simply write a check to send their kids to college.
凯瑟和她上高中的儿子马特一起参观科尔比学院，她是许多中产阶级美国人之一，他们的收入太高，没有资格获得基于需求的经济援助，但不足以简单地写一张支票送孩子上大学。
That’s a squeeze becoming more pronounced after several years of increases in the prices of many other goods and services, a period of inflation only now beginning to ease.
在许多其他商品和服务的价格连续几年上涨之后，这种挤压变得更加明显，而通货膨胀时期现在才开始缓解。
“The cost of everything, from food to gas to living expenses, has become so high,” Kayser said.
“从食品到汽油再到生活费用，一切的成本都变得如此之高，”凯泽说。
Middle-income Americans have borne a disproportionate share of college price increases, too. For them, the net cost of a degree has risen from 12 percent to 22 percent since 2009, depending on their earnings level, compared to about 1 percent for lower-income families, federal data show.
中等收入的美国人也承担了不成比例的大学价格上涨。联邦数据显示，对他们来说，自2009年以来，根据他们的收入水平，学位的净成本从12%上升到22%，而低收入家庭的净成本约为1%。
Now a handful of schools — many of them private, nonprofit institutions trying to compete with lower-priced public universities — are beginning to designate financial aid specifically for middle-income families in an attempt to lure them back.
现在，一些学校——其中许多是试图与价格较低的公立大学竞争的私立非营利机构——开始专门为中等收入家庭指定财政援助，试图吸引他们回来。
“This is a group, particularly in private colleges, where it just does not make sense to them, in many cases, to send their children to the colleges and universities that might be the best fit,” said David Greene, Colby’s president. “Many of them are feeling, frankly, a little stretched with everything that’s going on.”
科尔比校长戴维·格林(David Greene)表示：“这是一个群体，尤其是在私立大学，在许多情况下，将孩子送到可能最适合的学院和大学对他们来说是没有意义的。”“坦率地说，他们中的许多人对正在发生的一切感到有点不知所措。”
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Colby has announced a program that will take effect next fall to attract prospective students in the middle. It will cap the cost of tuition, room and board at $10,000 a year for families who earn up to $100,000, and $15,000 for those with incomes of from $100,000 to $150,000.
科尔比宣布了一项将于明年秋天生效的计划，以吸引未来的学生。对于收入不超过10万美元的家庭，每年的学费、食宿费用上限为1万美元，对于收入在10万美元至15万美元之间的家庭，每年的学费、食宿费用上限为1.5万美元。
That’s compared with the current net price at Colby of up to about $53,000 a year for people in those income brackets, after existing discounts and financial aid.
相比之下，在扣除现有折扣和经济援助后，科尔比目前这些收入阶层的人每年的净价高达约53,000美元。
The new, guaranteed lower price for middle-income families, underwritten by a $10 million gift from an alumnus, figures prominently in Colby’s outreach to prospective parents and students, popping up among the scenic promotional photos of stately red-brick Georgian revival buildings encircled by the Maine woods.
由一位校友捐赠1000万美元的赞助，为中等收入家庭提供了新的保证较低价格，在科尔比与未来家长和学生的外联活动中占据了突出地位，出现在缅因州森林环绕的庄严的红砖乔治亚复兴建筑的风景宣传照片中。
When she heard about it, “I felt the weight come off my shoulders,” said Kayser, of Westchester County, New York, who remembered being so relieved when she finally paid off her own substantial college loans that she framed the receipt.
纽约州威彻斯特县的凯瑟说，当她听说这件事时，“我感觉肩上的重担卸下来了”，她记得当她最终还清了自己的巨额大学贷款时，她如释重负，以至于她把收据裱了起来。
The anxiety among middle-income families about costs is having an effect on universities and colleges, whose proportion of students from those families has been declining. Their presence on U.S. campuses fell from 45 percent in 1996 to 37 percent in 2016, the Pew Research Center found using the most recent available federal data. Middle-income Americans make up 52 percent of the population, Pew estimates.
中等收入家庭对费用的焦虑正在对大学和学院产生影响，来自这些家庭的学生比例一直在下降。皮尤研究中心利用最新的联邦数据发现，他们在美国校园中的比例从1996年的45%下降到2016年的37%。皮尤估计，中等收入的美国人占总人口的52%。
Those drops might not seem particularly ominous. But in a complex balancing act, colleges badly need to appeal to those middle-income families that can afford to pay at least part of the price.
这些水滴可能看起来不是特别不祥。但在一个复杂的平衡行为中，大学迫切需要吸引那些至少有能力支付部分价格的中等收入家庭。
“That group of students is their bread and butter,” said Jinann Bitar, director of higher education research and data analytics at The Education Trust, which advocates for equity in education. “That’s why they’re trying to keep this group in the mix. Some inflow is better than no inflow.”
“这群学生是他们的生计，”倡导教育公平的教育信托基金高等教育研究和数据分析主任吉南·比塔尔说。“这就是为什么他们试图将这个群体留在组合中。有一些流入总比没有流入好。”
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The slowing drip in the number of middle-income students on campuses also comes as enrollment overall has been falling for a decade, meaning institutions need all the students they can get. At the same time, the proportion of students from lower-income families enrolling directly in college has been going up.
校园内中等收入学生数量下降放缓之际，整体入学率十年来一直在下降，这意味着学校需要尽可能多的学生。与此同时，来自低收入家庭的学生直接进入大学的比例一直在上升。
“Maybe we’ve done a better job with the lower-income students — that, yes, there is financial aid for you for college,” said Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “And maybe the middle has heard the message that financial aid is just for lower-income families.”
全国学生经济援助管理人员协会高级政策分析师吉尔·德斯让(Jill Desjean)表示：“也许我们在低收入学生方面做得更好——是的，你可以获得大学经济援助。”“也许中产阶级已经听到了这样的信息：经济援助只针对低收入家庭。”
This perception isn’t entirely true, Desjean said. Middle-income families can qualify for some federal, state and institutional financial aid.
德斯让说，这种看法并不完全正确。中等收入家庭有资格获得一些联邦、州和机构的财政援助。
“A lot of it is messaging — trying to simplify the message out there that, yes, we understand tuition is high, but there are programs you’re eligible for,” she said.
“其中很多都是信息传递——试图简化信息，是的，我们知道学费很高，但有些项目你有资格参加，”她说。
The median household income as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau is $77,540. Pew defines “middle income” as ranging between two-thirds and twice that much, or from $51,176 to $155,080.
美国人口普查局确定的家庭收入中位数为77,540美元。皮尤将“中等收入”定义为这个数字的三分之二到两倍，即51,176美元到155,080美元。
Families with annual incomes of from $75,000 to $110,000 get less than half as much financial aid as people who make under $48,000, federal figures show.
联邦数据显示，年收入在75,000美元至110,000美元之间的家庭获得的经济援助还不到年收入低于48,000美元的家庭的一半。
That can make college a struggle, even when both parents work, and especially in families with several children and with assets such as houses.
这可能会让上大学成为一场斗争，即使父母都工作，尤其是在有几个孩子并拥有房屋等资产的家庭中。
“Anyone who has to borrow or use financial aid to afford college is getting squeezed. That’s the gist,” Bitar said. “There are a lot of middle-income families that are really worried about access to college, and those voices have been loud.”
“任何必须借钱或使用经济援助来支付大学费用的人都受到了挤压。这就是要点，”比塔尔说。“有很多中等收入家庭真正担心上大学，这些声音一直很大。”
In his previous role as vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College in Connecticut, Angel Pérez saw how financial aid calculations could disadvantage middle-income families.
安吉尔·佩雷斯(Angel Pérez)之前在康涅狄格州三一学院(Trinity College)担任负责招生和学生成功的副校长，他看到了经济援助计算如何使中等收入家庭处于不利地位。
“If you add the layer on top of that of the skepticism about the value of higher education right now, we are seeing more middle-income families just not getting into the pipeline or enrolling,” said Pérez, who is now CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
现任高等教育首席执行官的佩雷斯说：“如果你在目前对高等教育价值的怀疑之上再加上一层，我们会看到更多的中等收入家庭根本没有进入管道或入学。”全国大学入学咨询协会。
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Meanwhile, the disconnect between the prices colleges advertise, and what they actually expect people to pay appears to particularly frustrate many middle-income families.
与此同时，大学宣传的价格与他们实际期望人们支付的价格之间的脱节似乎特别让许多中等收入家庭感到沮丧。
At Colby, a private liberal arts college, the published total cost for this academic year is around $90,000, for instance. But half of families already get some form of financial aid.
例如，在私立文理学院科尔比，本学年公布的总费用约为9万美元。但是一半的家庭已经获得了某种形式的经济援助。
“I have a hard time with a price tag that’s so high, and they say, ‘Don’t worry, you’re never going to pay that,’” said Ryan Paulson of Traverse City, Michigan, on a tour of Colby with his wife, Kate, and their daughter, Annie, and who was speaking about the college admission process in general. “Just tell us the price.”
密歇根州特拉弗斯城的瑞安·保尔森(Ryan Paulson)在参观科尔比时说道：“我很难接受如此高的价格，他们说，‘别担心，你永远不会为此付出代价。’”他的妻子凯特和女儿安妮正在谈论大学录取过程。“告诉我们价格就行了。”
Part of Colby’s strategy is to simplify what Greene called “this overly byzantine and complex system,” by showing the maximum amount a student will be charged based on his or her family’s income.
科尔比策略的一部分是简化格林所说的“这个过于拜占庭和复杂的系统”，通过显示学生将根据其家庭收入收取的最高金额。
“It’s pretty simple. If you make $200,000 a year, you’re going to pay no more than $20,000 for tuition, room and board,” he said. “We try to keep it as clean and easy as we can.”
“这很简单。如果你一年挣20万美元，你支付的学费、食宿费不超过2万美元，”他说。“我们尽量保持干净和简单。”
Many parents, at all income levels, don’t know about the full range of financial aid that might be available to them, a survey by the lending company Sallie Mae found. More than half think money goes only to students with exceptional grades, and nearly 40 percent believe it’s not worth bothering to apply if they make what they assume is too much money.
贷款公司Sallie Mae的一项调查发现，许多不同收入水平的父母都不知道他们可以获得的全方位经济援助。超过一半的人认为钱只会流向成绩优异的学生，近40%的人认为，如果他们赚了他们认为太多的钱，就不值得费心申请。
The Paulsons’ goal for their daughter “is for her to not fall in love with any school, knowing that, being in the middle, we might not be able to afford it,” Kate Paulson said.
凯特·保尔森说，保尔森夫妇对女儿的目标是“让她不要爱上任何学校，因为她知道，在中间，我们可能负担不起”。
The universities and colleges that have begun making financial aid available specifically for middle-income families are typically wealthy and highly selective.
已经开始专门为中等收入家庭提供经济援助的大学和学院通常都很富裕，而且选择性很强。
With a student body of 2,300, for example, Colby has an endowment worth more than $1.1 billion and accepts just 7 percent of applicants. The campus tour includes a new $200 million, 350,000-square-foot athletic complex that’s so big and high-tech, opposing teams have taken to calling it the Death Star.
例如，科尔比拥有2300名学生，其捐赠基金价值超过11亿美元，但只接受7%的申请人。校园之旅包括一个耗资2亿美元、占地35万平方英尺的新体育中心，它是如此之大和高科技，对立的球队已经开始称之为死星。
Rice University, a private research campus in Houston, is seeking to raise $150 million by the end of this academic year to continue a program it began in 2019 of giving full-tuition scholarships to undergraduates from families that earn between $75,000 and $140,000.
休斯顿的一所私立研究校园莱斯大学（Rice University）正寻求在本学年结束前筹集1.5亿美元，以继续其于2019年开始的一项计划，为收入在75,000美元至140,000美元之间的家庭的本科生提供全额奖学金。
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Many institutions say they’re trying to appeal to these families because they want to balance the socioeconomic representation on their campuses.
许多机构表示，他们试图吸引这些家庭，因为他们想平衡校园内的社会经济代表性。
But another major reason is to help address an ongoing decline in enrollment projected to get much steeper beginning next year.
但另一个主要原因是帮助解决入学人数持续下降的问题，预计明年开始入学人数将大幅下降。
“If the enrollment issue is a struggle for your university or college, you’d better be thinking about how you price things, in a simple and straightforward way,” Greene said.
格林说：“如果招生问题对你的大学或学院来说是一个难题，你最好考虑如何以简单直接的方式定价。”
Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, cited affordability issues it said were discouraging middle-income applicants when it announced a “Middle America Scholarship” providing up to $6,395 this year to families with annual incomes between $35,000 and $95,000.
弗吉尼亚州林奇堡的自由大学(Liberty University)在宣布一项“美国中产阶级奖学金”(Middle America Scholarship)今年向年收入在35,000美元至95,000美元之间的家庭提供高达6,395美元的“负担能力问题”(Middle America Scholarship)时表示，负担能力问题阻碍了中等收入申请者。
Grinnell College in Iowa offers scholarships toward what it calls “felt” financial need among middle-income families frustrated that the calculations of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, overstate what they can actually afford.
爱荷华州格林内尔学院（Grinnell College）为中等收入家庭提供奖学金，这些家庭对免费申请联邦学生援助（FAFSA）的计算夸大了他们的实际负担能力感到沮丧。
Some prospective students “are squeezed out of eligibility for need-based financial aid even though they do not have the financial wherewithal to fund higher education without assistance,” said Brad Lindberg, Grinnell’s associate vice president of institutional initiatives and enrollment.
格林内尔负责机构倡议和招生的副总裁布拉德·林德伯格（Brad Lindberg）表示，一些潜在的学生“被挤出了基于需求的财政援助的资格，尽管他们没有必要的财政手段在没有援助的情况下资助高等教育”。
The problem for colleges, he said, is that families like those “assume they’re not going to be eligible for financial aid, so they just don’t apply. People exclude themselves from the process before the process even starts.”
他说，大学面临的问题是，像这样的家庭“认为他们没有资格获得经济援助，所以他们就不申请。人们甚至在流程开始之前就将自己排除在流程之外。”
Greene, at Colby, said that could be among the reasons that only a little more than a third of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to a Gallup survey — down from 57 percent in 2015.
科尔比的格林表示，根据盖洛普的一项调查，这可能是现在只有略多于三分之一的美国人表示他们对高等教育有“很大”或“相当大”信心的原因之一——低于2015年的57%。
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“The value proposition of higher education relative to its cost is a huge question mark in the minds of many people,” he said. “That’s why I think there’s such extraordinary discontent about America’s colleges and universities, because middle-income families are the ones that have been squeezed out of those top places.”
“高等教育相对于其成本的价值主张在许多人心中是一个巨大的问号，”他说。“这就是为什么我认为人们对美国的学院和大学如此不满，因为中等收入家庭是被挤出那些顶尖学校的人。”
Targeting middle-income families with designated scholarships appears to be working, according to some of the colleges that have already been doing it.
根据一些已经这样做的大学的说法，用指定的奖学金瞄准中等收入家庭似乎正在发挥作用。
“We’ve seen a nice bump in applications,” said Karen Kristof, assistant vice president and dean of admission at Colorado College. “We’ve seen a better yield.”
科罗拉多学院助理副校长兼招生主任凯伦·克里斯托夫(Karen Kristof)表示：“我们看到申请数量大幅增加。”“我们看到了更好的产量。”
Since 2019, the private college has limited the cost of room and board to about $16,000 a year for Colorado families with annual incomes between $60,000 and $125,000.
自2019年以来，这所私立学院将年收入在6万美元至12.5万美元之间的科罗拉多州家庭的食宿费用限制在每年1.6万美元左右。
“This is a group that felt neglected in the need-based system” that favors lower-income applicants, Kristof said.
克里斯托夫说，“这个群体在基于需求的系统中感到被忽视”，该系统有利于低收入申请人。
Now, more colleges and universities are setting out to boost the people in the middle. A donor has helped the public University of Montana double, to $15 million, the annual amount available from its Payne Family Impact Scholarship for in-state middle-income families.
现在，更多高校着手提振中间人群。一位捐助者帮助蒙大拿公立大学将其佩恩家庭影响奖学金每年为该州中等收入家庭提供的金额增加了一倍，达到1500万美元。
“We had a clear understanding and feedback from families in Montana that we just didn’t have enough to offer in the middle-income range,” said Leslie Webb, the university’s vice president for student success and enrollment management.
该大学负责学生成功和招生管理的副校长莱斯利·韦伯(Leslie Webb)表示：“我们清楚地了解蒙大拿州家庭的反馈，认为我们在中等收入范围内无法提供足够的服务。”
Some advocates warned that colleges shouldn’t forsake their lowest-income applicants in the cause of helping middle-income ones.
一些倡导者警告说，大学不应该为了帮助中等收入的申请人而抛弃收入最低的申请人。
“It’s crucial for colleges to still target their limited resources to students with the lowest incomes,” said Diane Cheng, vice president of research and policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
高等教育政策研究所负责研究和政策的副总裁黛安·程(Diane Cheng)表示：“对于大学来说，仍然将有限的资源瞄准收入最低的学生至关重要。”
The institute calculates that a typical middle-income family has to spend 35 percent of its annual household income sending a child to college for a year. “That’s a pretty substantial share,” said Cheng. But for the lowest-income Americans, she said, a year in college consumes the equivalent of nearly one and a half times their annual household income.
该研究所计算出，一个典型的中等收入家庭必须花费家庭年收入的35%送孩子上一年大学。“这是一个相当大的份额，”程说。但她说，对于收入最低的美国人来说，大学一年的消费相当于他们家庭年收入的近一倍半。
“Institutions typically have limited resources for providing financial aid,” Cheng said, “and we want to encourage them to balance their desire to attract students from middle-income families with supporting students from low-income backgrounds.”
“院校提供经济援助的资源通常有限，”程说，“我们希望鼓励他们在吸引中等收入家庭学生和支持低收入家庭学生的愿望之间取得平衡。”
Still, institutions are increasingly focused on this issue, said Art Rodriguez, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at Carleton College. The private institution in Northfield, Minnesota, also offers scholarships specifically to families in the middle.
卡尔顿学院副校长兼招生和财政援助主任阿特·罗德里格斯说，尽管如此，各机构越来越关注这个问题。明尼苏达州诺斯菲尔德的私立机构也专门为中产阶级家庭提供奖学金。
“The number in the middle is decreasing,” he said, “so colleges are making efforts to try to not lose that middle.”
“中间的人数正在减少，”他说，“所以大学正在努力不失去中间的人数。”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@hechingerreport.org.
请致电212-678-7556或jmarcus@hechingerreport.org联系作家Jon Marcus。
This story about middle-class families paying for college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
这个关于中产阶级家庭支付大学费用的故事由Hechinger Report制作，这是一家专注于教育不平等和创新的非营利性独立新闻机构。注册我们的高等教育时事通讯。收听我们的高等教育播客。
