… involving admissions, financial aid, and national rankings, for some time. Or so it appears. And because the campus newspaper, The Hatchet, has been aggressive in its investigative reporting lately (it broke the now-national need-aware rather than need-blind story), the university can expect its year-long string of bad news stories to lengthen.
These stories include – for good measure – the messy and mysterious firing of the business school dean, and another charge of system-gaming, this one alleging the inflation of GW’s endowment growth by its investment officers.
The investment story includes this yummy morsel:
[The whistle blower] also claims that she had previously “questioned [the Chief Investment Officer’s] ethics,” pointing to his private consulting services as a conflict of interest.
She said after confronting him about his monthly trips to the Bahamas for the private consulting, he announced that he would end his outside consulting services.
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UD‘s student, Jacob Garner, with whom she’s working on his senior thesis about David Foster Wallace (Jacob just got back from the University of Texas, where he went – with GW research fellowship money! – to look at Wallace’s papers) notes in his Hatchet column that in fact GW had no reason to lie about its need-aware policy:
When you look at the actual issue – why GW needs to be need-aware – it starts to make sense. People will understand. So why lie?
GW’s endowment of $1.3 billion hardly rivals those of need-blind colleges Northwestern and New York universities, with endowments that stand at about $7 and $3 billion respectively.
Administrators are searching for ways to bring in as much money as they can, and being need-aware is an obvious way to increase tuition revenue. But administrators shouldn’t be lying about our admissions policies.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:48PM
If GWU feels that it must be need-aware to keep up the with Jones’, then so be it: but how about if they call it what it really is, then – affirmative action for rich people?
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:51PM
Well, there’s plenty of financial help at GW for less than rich people. It’s true that the school is rightly associated with lots of really rich students; but to be fair it is also quite generous in supporting needier students.
And you can be totally need blind AND an affirmative action school for rich people.
October 23rd, 2013 at 2:00PM
I’m just looking for more honesty in advertising (“transparency”, I believe the PR office calls it), UD.
“We are need-aware. That means we are aware that you would need more of our money to come here. Which is why you’re not going to.”
October 23rd, 2013 at 2:02PM
Yup. Fair enough, Alan.