Editorial : Scholarships for middle-income students vital to offset rising tuition costs

A year ago, trustee and alumnus Howard ‘Howie’ Phanstiel and his wife, Louise, donated $20 million to Syracuse University to fund partial scholarships for students from middle-income families. This freshman class is the first to benefit from the Phanstiels’ gift.

These target scholarships serve as a tremendous example of the kind of gifts that truly make a difference to young adults and their futures. The costs of college have become too burdensome for middle-income families to shoulder without assuming tens of thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars — in loans.

SU has retained a reputation for generous undergraduate aid. But such gifts as that of the Phanstiels’ allow SU to expand its reach to America’s working middle class without raising the discount rate, the amount of financial aid, so high it takes away from other areas of the campus.

Research and commentary done by experts in higher education, such as Russell Osgood, president of Grinnell College, have argued metrics like the Free Application for Student Aid overestimates the amount of money a typical middle-income family can put toward tuition. Middle-income families, as Osgood refers to them, make $60,000 to $120,000 a year for a family of four.

State and federal programs make great and admirable efforts to aid college-bound young adults from poor or minority backgrounds. And needless to say, students from wealthy backgrounds require little to no assistance. But middle-class students receive the short end of the stick, deciding their academic future based on finances rather than on program strength.

Adding to the financial pressure of these students is the need to go to college to maintain a middle-class standard of living. A bachelor’s degree, if not a master’s, has become more and more of a necessity for average middle-income jobs.

Gifts like the Phanstiels’ gift are prudent in their understanding of this system and the growing need of middle-class families. They’ve established a model for scholarships that should be replicated by future donors.