Columbia Responds to Congress's Questions About University Endowments

Editor's note:

On April 1, President Lee C. Bollinger responded to a joint request by the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means, which in February posed several questions to 56 private colleges and universities with endowments larger than $1 billion. Below is President Bollinger’s letter, which accompanied the University's response:

April 01, 2016

Dear Chairman Hatch, Chairman Brady and Chairman Roskam,

I respectfully submit the accompanying responses to your questions about Columbia University’s operations, the status of the University’s endowment, and the ways in which we are striving to fulfill our mission of teaching, research, patient care, and public service. We look forward to working with you to continue addressing the affordability of a college education. Moreover, we value and appreciate the support you and other members of Congress provide for America’s higher education system. It remains the finest in the world, and Congress’s support is essential for its preservation and improvement.

The steps Columbia is taking to fulfill its commitment to providing a world-class education accessible to all, regardless of family income, may be familiar to you and your members from our prior submission to Congress. Columbia now fully pays the tuition, room, board and fees of undergraduates at Columbia College and our School of Engineering whose families earn less than $60,000 per year (compared to an upper threshold of $50,000 in 2008 when we last corresponded with the Senate Finance Committee).

College and Engineering undergraduate students whose families earn between $60,000 and $100,000 face a much reduced parent contribution. All financial aid provided by Columbia to these students comes in the form of grants rather than loans, regardless of family income. A critical element of accessibility and affordability is Columbia’s need-blind admissions policy for U.S. citizens and permanent residents, meaning that financial need has no bearing on admissions decisions. This mix of policies, in combination with Columbia’s history of welcoming and supporting children of lower income families, has resulted in a percentage of first year undergraduates eligible for Pell Grants that consistently approaches 20 percent, making Columbia a leader in this regard among our peer universities.

We also are strengthening our efforts to attract and recruit students who may think that attending Columbia is beyond their reach. Our undergraduate schools send admissions officers to high schools with high proportions of low-income and first generation students, deliver targeted communications about financial aid, and have launched a new affordability postcard campaign. Two years ago, we began conducting financial aid workshops in the northern Manhattan neighborhoods near our campuses. Columbia’s Opportunity Programs offer economically disadvantaged students with strong potential an extra year of financial aid eligibility, enhanced advising and tutoring, and access to a summer bridge program.

Certainly, the growth in our endowment has been central to the greater financial stability achieved by Columbia over the past decade, and we are grateful for the generosity of our alumni and other donors who support Columbia’s mission. I simply want to note in closing that the size of the University’s endowment and the percentage of the endowment restricted to or designated for financial aid are not the sole factors determining our ability to provide the robust support for low and middle income students described above. We succeed in attracting such students and in eliminating economic barriers to their enrollment at Columbia because we also make use of our unrestricted operating budget to support financial aid and prioritize this goal when assessing the many competing demands on the University’s budget.

Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger