How to Build an Ivy Winner: Step 2

Time for a Bold Money Move

Columbia's endowment has now grown to $7.7 billion (Up anout $1.2B since 2011)

To his credit, Columbia football Head Coach Pete Mangurian has been fully aware of the new financial realities in the Ivies from the earliest days of his return to the league after a 12 year absence. Mangurian cited the new tuition and financial aid pressures as the #1 difference in the Ivies when he was asked last year about what changes he’d noticed across the league.

To make a long story short, tuition in the Ivies has continued to skyrocket well beyond the rate of inflation despite the economic crisis and resulting recession and slow recovery.

The result is that the prospect of recruiting players from non-super wealthy families is a great new challenge. It’s one thing to ask a family making $75K to $100K a year to swallow the cost of an Ivy education; we’ve always known that was a tall order. But now even rich families making upwards of $400K can legitimately be scared off by what amounts to a $250K price tag for four years of tuition, room, board, transportation, etc.

The clear winners in this new financial game have been Harvard and Princeton. They were the first to institute massive cuts to tuition costs based on a families annual income almost a decade ago. The impact for Harvard sports was immediate, while it took a little longer for Princeton.

Columbia isn’t totally out of the picture in this tuition relief movement, but it should be more competitive considering the relative health of its endowment compared to Yale, (Yale took a bigger hit from the recession, so did Harvard to be exact). And every one of our athletics coaches needs to keep pounding the table about improving the financial aid picture at CU. Again to their credit, I believe most of them really are.

Nevertheless, it does seem like the number of wealthier students on our key varsity teams is growing. And there’s no denying that the 200% increase in tuition since I graduated in 1992 has to be the biggest reason for that.

But instead of playing catch up on financial aid, Columbia should take the lead on something more radical: actual tuition REDUCTION.

Sounds crazy, but that kind of move would get noticed for all the right reasons. The old argument that lowering tuition would make a school look desperate is ludicrous at Columbia with its effective 6% acceptance rate, (and it’s more like just 1% for non-varsity athletes). Financial aid is one thing, but there’s nothing like that sticker shock to deter a lot of great applicants.

Think about it: what is the only “undiscovered country” left for the Ivy admissions officers who continue to scratch for more racial and geographic diversity? I’d say it’s those kids from middle class families who might be able to get lots of tuition assistance but still lack for help covering all the other costs. Plus, don’t underestimate the culture shock some teens and their families don’t want to experience as they become the obviously poorest kid in the dorm or on the team.

I very much fault Mangurian and co. for not recruiting the right personnel and using them properly, but this financial hurdle is not their fault and I don’t think they’re able to remotely fix it on their own anyway.

But it is a fact of life in the Ivies. Unless Columbia flexes its financial muscles and really cuts its costs rather than create more financial aid programs, we’ll always be behind the Harvards and the Princetons on this one.

There’s no reason why Columbia shouldn’t be destroying smaller schools with less money like Dartmouth and Brown when it comes to what we can offer recruited athletes financially. Penn and Cornell are also well behind us when it comes to endowment and other liabilities. Yale might have more money, but not as much more as you might think. In other words, we are one of the financial big boys of the Ivies. We should start acting like it.