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To fee, or not to fee...
Topic Started: Dec 21 2015, 08:06 AM (202 Views)
Quasimodo

Quote:
 
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/21/potential-grad-applicant-nyu-goes-public-email-turning-down-fee-waiver-request

Lost Fees or Lost Students?

December 21, 2015

Many colleges tell potential students who may not be able to afford application fees that they can seek a waiver. Even if application fees are under $100, there are many students who can't afford that -- or who can't afford to apply to four or five programs each charging a fee.

Joshua Jackson, a senior at Brown University, says he is such a student. So when he considered applying to a master's program in arts politics at New York University, he wrote to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts to ask about fee waivers. The response he received has set off discussion not only over NYU's policies, but about whether colleges and universities that claim to want to recruit low-income minority students like Jackson are as inclusive as they say.
Dan Sandford, director of graduate admissions at Tisch, emailed Jackson to turn down the request. Here's Sandford's response in full:

"Please do not take this the wrong way but if $65 is a hardship for you how will you be able to pay the tuition of $60,000? Of course we do provide scholarships but the most we usually offer is $15,000-$20,000. This still leaves a considerable gap. Maybe you should give yourself a year off looking at ways to fund your graduate education. That way, if you apply to a fine school and are offered admission with a good but not complete financial aid package, you will be in a better position to accept it by bringing some resources of your own to the table. Our application fee is quite low compared to our peer schools. We keep it that way on purpose. However, the contribution of each candidate is essential in order for us to meet our expenses. We do not have a separate budget to pull from. If a candidate were not to pay, the department would have to absorb the loss. I apologize that we are unable to provide a fee waiver and hope this does not dampen your resolve to apply to the Arts Politics program."

Jackson's response? He posted the email to Twitter, writing, "Please explain." His tweet has prompted discussion -- and perhaps changes at NYU.
First, it should be noted that some other master's programs in the arts actually have lower application fees than NYU (Carnegie Mellon University charges $50 to apply). But other leading arts programs -- that do charge more than NYU's $65 -- offer fee waivers for low-income students. (The University of California at Los Angeles, for example, charges $90 to apply to graduate programs, but offers fee waivers for those who meet various criteria, such as being a current undergraduate receiving need-based financial aid.)

Is it appropriate for graduate programs to advertise a blanket policy of denying fee waivers?

Tressie McMillan Cottom, an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University who has a wide social media following for her commentary on issues of equity in higher education (among other subjects), was so frustrated by the NYU response to Jackson that she tweeted to Jackson that she would pay his application fee.

Via email with Inside Higher Ed, Cottom said NYU's response to Jackson was "revealingly honest in a sector of higher education that can be shrouded in mystery. The director of admissions at the Tisch School is saying that they 1) offer little funding, 2) are very expensive and 3) rely on application fees for revenue. That is not only true for Tisch but it isn't often that it is so blatantly stated, much less to a possible applicant."

But Cottom also called the response "heavy-handed and dismissive."

She explained, "I have worked with many graduate prep programs with 'diversity' missions. I have also counseled many students about graduate school. In my experiences, it is standard operating procedure to counsel students to ask schools for fee waivers. Fee waivers have become one of the nominal and symbolic measures of higher education 'access' that we argue is important for diversity, however it is being defined at any given point in time. Tisch's response suggests that either this practice is shifting or that Tisch does not invest in these nominal measures of access.

"That is the kind of thing we should be glad to know for the sake of accuracy, but that is cold comfort for those of us who care about educational justice. Also, when we are in positions of authority, our well-meaning advice can be understood as law. That is even more true when the parties involve bring different types of cultural capital to the exchange. I was distraught to think that a student without Joshua's experience might take the director of admissions at a prestigious university with an international name brand as a singular voice on graduate school admissions."

In response to questions about the Twitter discussion, Allyson Green, dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, sent a statement to Inside Higher Ed, saying, "Contrary to the information Mr. Jackson received, the NYU Tisch School of the Arts does and will waive application fees for students in need, and we have now done so for Mr. Jackson. We see a diverse student body as crucial to the development of original, bold and disruptive work, so inclusiveness is our top priority." Green added that NYU offers considerable financial aid to make it possible for low-income students to enroll, and is pushing to do more in this area.

(snip)

Making it easy for low-income students to obtain fee waivers may seem a "small gesture," Shih said via email, but it "provides a wildly different atmosphere of encouragement and possibility for students who are underrepresented in higher ed.

"Things as seemingly insignificant as application fee waivers -- or unwarranted and abrasive life advice from admissions officers, like in the case here -- perpetuate the inaccessibility of higher ed for many students in the U.S.," she added. And "as this incident comes on the back of many conversations about the importance of increasing diversity across U.S. college campuses, this serves as just a tiny example of how classism reproduces persistent barriers to higher education."

(snip)

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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/22/nyu-reverses-course-fee-waivers-graduate-admissions#disqus_thread

About-Face on Fee Waivers

NYU changes policy and its website, and apologizes to would-be graduate student who went public after being told the university didn't grant waivers.
December 22, 2015

(snip)

John Beckman, a spokesman for NYU, released a statement outlining the university's new approach to what happened to Jackson.

"The exchange between a graduate admissions officer at NYU's Tisch School and a potential applicant for admission was wrong and unfortunate on many levels," Beckman wrote.

"First, on the policy level. The Tisch School [the NYU division where Jackson wanted to apply] wants a diverse class in its program;

[meaning, you will be discriminated against if you belong to a white or Asian ethnic group, no matter how qualified you may be otherwise]

having a stated policy that doesn't allow the application fee to be waived for those with financial need is at odds with that important goal, with our values and with many of NYU's programs, which do allow for application fees to be waived. And we are clearing this up immediately. Allyson Green, dean of the Tisch School of the Arts, made it clear to all faculty and administrators that fees can be waived for those with financial need. We have changed the language on the website to reflect this policy. In addition, the incoming president, Andrew Hamilton, is writing to all of NYU's deans to make sure they have a policy in place to waive application fees for students with financial needs."

Beckman added: "Second, on the practical level. The fact is, every year we did waive fees for a number of students applying to this program who asked. But this was done opaquely, which serves no one well; it's simply not right to have a policy saying one thing and a practice that's at odds with it.

"Third, on the personal level. We handled our communications with Joshua Jackson badly.

[We heard that from Duke in the lax case...]


Part of it may have been the inevitable result of the ambiguous way we handled a policy that was wrong to begin with, but part of it was just insensitivity. Frankly, Joshua Jackson was right to call us out. We deserved it, and we owe an apology, which we have conveyed. We'd be pleased to have Joshua apply; if not, we understand -- it's our fault."

Jackson could not be reached Monday for a reaction.



Note: a university apologized for its actions.

Now, that's not something you will find at Duke (think of the many instances, from Kathy Rouse to several others, who might be considered
deserving of apologies).

"Apologize? For what?"



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