Brett Masters

Despite a more than $50 million decline in endowments and subsequent across-the-board budget cuts, Academy administrators say the amount of financial aid available to incoming and returning Deerfield students will not decline in the 2003-04 school year.

"We're really incredibly fortunate," said Patricia Gimbel, director of admission and financial aid. "We never know year to year whether we're going to be able to meet the need. We have been fortunate in the last five years in that we've been able to do so." The Academy's financial aid budget will increase to $4.3 million from just over $4.0 million in 2002-03, reflecting a 6.9% increase in tuition for the next academic year. Administrators anticipate that this budget, in line with past years, will be large enough to cover the costs of aid in 2003. "It is our plan that we will have enough funds to protect returning students [on scholarship] and to award aid to new applicants," Mrs. Gimbel said.

The announcement comes at a time when many school institutions are finding constrictions on aid budgets an obstacle to maintaining so-called "need-blind" admissions policies.

In January, Harvard's Crimson published a series of scathing editorials in which it suggested that some of the university's financial aid policies were not meeting students' needs and that family income has come to play an implicit role in the admissions office.

Similar controversies are creeping up around the country as educational institutions try to adjust to a slothful economic climate that has dampened the endowment orgy of the late nineties, when Americans donated an average of $25 billion to education annually and endowment investments surged. As budgets become leaner, it will become more and more difficult for admissions officers to populate incoming freshman classes with students in need of financial aid monies derived from shrinking endowments.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in late January that, nationwide, academic endowments experienced an average dip of 6 percent last year, following a 3.1 percent decline in 2001. This is the first ever back-to-back national drop since 1971. Deerfield has felt the pinch.

The Scroll reported earlier this year that the Academy's endowments decreased nearly 18% over the last three fiscal years, precipitating minor cutbacks.

"The decline in the value of capital markets has affected every operation of the Academy," said Michael Sheridan, Deerfield's business manager. "Every other budget in the institution excepting staff and faculty salaries is going down." But Deerfield has made maintaining its financial aid levels a top priority and, Mr. Sheridan said, "Most recent experience in capital markets has not yet had much effect on the way the admissions office operates."

The stability of financial aid levels at Deerfield has been guaranteed in part by the Academy's Strength of Heart fundraising campaign completed in 2002.

Begun in 1998 in honor of Deerfield's bicentennial, the campaign drew $157 million in new endowments to Deerfield's coffer, of which more than 21% was earmarked for financial aid endowment. These new funds, in combination with dozens of existing scholarships now account for 60% of the financial aid budget at Deerfield.

"The challenge we faced when we went into the campaign was to keep Deerfield affordable. With the tuition we charge, we risked eliminating a segment of the student population- those who can't afford to pay $28,000 a year," said Michael Perry, Deerfield director of development, who helped lead the effort. "Not every school has the resources to maintain a need-blind admissions process like Deerfield's."

Deerfield's ability to maintain its need-blind admissions policy and to assemble a student body in which 36% of students receive some form of financial aid, owes not only to its aid endowments, but also to a profound commitment on the part of administrators to promoting socioeconomic diversity in the school. This is an ethos residing, said Mrs. Gimbel, from the days of Headmaster Frank Boyden. "Mr. Boyden understood that it is an educational benefit to the school to promote a diverse student body. He just asked students' families to pay whatever they could. That's kind of what we're doing here."

The long-term well-being of financial aid at Deerfield, however, contingent upon the performance of endowment investments, is unclear and if current economic trends continue, applicants' financial need may come to play a larger role in admissions.

"Our current projections," Mr. Sheridan warns, "are that the Academy will experience more difficulty in 2004, 2005, and 2006 than it has in 2003 in designing and implementing a balanced budget."

If these projections prove to be accurate, they will translate into additional, more severe cutbacks on spending at all levels, including financial aid.