Legislation to allow aid talks to continue

Legislation allowing officials at colleges and universities that provide need-blind admissions to continue to discuss their aid policies and refine the formulas they use to measure a student's financial need was signed into law by President Bush Nov. 20.

This allows continuation of efforts by a group of 28 university presidents, led by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings, to develop a new "Consensus Approach to Need Analysis" for use in determining student eligibility for financial aid. This effort, announced last July, is intended to provide clarity and fairness in the financial aid process (see http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/July01/568.presidents.html).

"This action by the president and Congress recognizes the importance of efforts by officials at institutions that offer need-blind admissions to make the financial aid process accessible and transparent to students and their families," Rawlings said.

In 1992, as Congress renewed the Higher Education Act, it added a ban on discussions of financial aid among colleges and universities. This followed an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Justice Department against 23 highly selective colleges, including Cornell, known as the Overlap Group, which had met annually to determine aid for individual students admitted to more than one of the institutions.

In 1994 Congress created an antitrust exemption (Section 568 of the Improving America's Schools Act) that sanctioned efforts by eligible institutions,that is, those practicing need-blind admissions, to discuss and agree upon common principles of financial aid need-analysis.

In early 1999, the 568 Presidents' Working Group, an ad hoc group of college and university presidents, was formed under the leadership of Rawlings, who continues as its chair, and then-President Harry Payne of Williams College. Their recommendations are designed to bring greater clarity, simplicity and fairness to the process of assessing each family's ability to pay for college.