Priorities Set for Remainder of Campaign

The campaign has already raised more than $69 million for student aid and led to the creation of more than 100 named scholarships. But despite the efforts of Hopkins and other universities and colleges to rein in tuition growth, financial aid remains a critical need.

At their meeting today [Sunday, May 3] in New York, the university's trustees accepted President William R. Brody's recommendation that student aid -- both undergraduate scholarships and graduate and post-doctoral fellowships -- be the foremost priority for the remainder of the campaign.

"Our tradition of academic excellence has always been coupled with a commitment to make a Hopkins education affordable for all qualified students," Brody said. "We must increase our endowment for student financial aid so that no student -- graduate or undergraduate -- will turn down an invitation for lack of funds, and to ensure that our graduates are not burdened by unreasonable debt. This is our single most important need."

There also will be a strong campaign emphasis, Brody said, on soliciting support for the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, the university's main research library.

"The Eisenhower Library has long been a crucial resource for Hopkins, and its role is about to become even more important as fundamental changes in higher education, information technology and scholarly communication begin to play themselves out," Brody said. "The digital, networked library of the 21st century will be a far different place than the traditional, industrial age library of the 20th. We need to begin building that library now."

In addition to student aid and library support, the campaign will also pursue funding for specific priorities set by each of the university's schools and by Johns Hopkins Medicine, with emphasis on strengthening endowment and improving facilities. The campaign also will continue to seek support for several not-yet-completed building projects.

The ability of students and families to afford both an undergraduate education and graduate school without assuming unduly burdensome debt has been a major concern for Brody since he became president in 1996.

Hopkins tuition -- $21,700 this year for undergraduates in the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering on the Homewood campus -- is about in the middle of the range of comparable private colleges and universities. But, primarily because of a paucity of endowment designated for student aid, the amount of scholarship support the university can offer lower- and middle-income students has been less than at many peer institutions.

Hopkins, like all highly selective institutions, is committed to admitting a diverse student body and, to the extent possible, ensuring that qualified students are not kept from the school of their choice by their families' financial circumstances. But, while other universities can use endowment income to fund much of their student aid budgets, Hopkins must divert more tuition dollars for that purpose.

This year, about 60 percent of Homewood campus undergraduates receive need- based financial aid, and the number seeking aid has increased significantly in the 1990s.

Some peer institutions -- including Yale, Stanford, and Princeton -- recently announced that they will draw on their endowments to significantly increase student aid for middle-income families.

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