Trusting W&L Cost Me Thousands

The university cares more about burnishing its finances than doing what’s right for students.

Washington and Lee University’s endowment, as of the time of this letter, is hovering around $2 billion dollars. It can be hard to process the size of that number. JetBlue is one of the nation’s largest airlines, offering flights between the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe. Its market capitalization is just under $2 billion. W&L’s endowment is worth more than the entire JetBlue corporation.

W&L’s marketing materials, aimed toward prospective students, do not shy away from this fact.

They tout the impact their endowment can have: “Our top-25 endowment among all U.S. colleges and universities allows us to provide need-based financial aid to the greatest number of students across the broadest range of incomes,” according to their website. They even go so far as to make a “No-Loan Commitment,” claiming that students can “graduate debt-free” thanks to their generous financial aid program.

When I applied to W&L, I was persuaded by this marketing material given that the total cost of attendance far exceeded the money which my family had saved.

My father was the first in his family to graduate college, and through a combination of skill and luck, he started a small business selling agricultural supplies. His business allows my family to live comfortably, though far from lavishly. My parents had some money set aside for my college expenses, but just enough to attend a state school, and far too little to meet W&L’s $350,000 total cost of attendance.

Nonetheless, I applied, not because I felt I could afford to attend, but because I trusted W&L to make attendance affordable, just as they claimed they would. When they offered me a place in the class of 2025, I excitedly accepted.

In my first year, W&L kept its promise. I received over $35,000 in W&L grants, and my family could lean upon my college savings for the vast majority of the year’s tuition cost. My college savings account was nearly drained at the end of my freshman year, but I trusted that W&L would include this as part of their calculation for my sophomore year aid.

Unfortunately, they did not. In my sophomore year, the W&L Financial Aid Office offered me no grant whatsoever. Not wanting to transfer, I reluctantly took out a private student loan, hoping that this was a fluke.

When I informed the Financial Aid Office that I needed to take out a loan, they were far from supportive. Rather than offering to reassess my need or even explain the substantial change in grant funding, they instead required me to attend a meeting to learn about “financial literacy,” not-so-subtly implying that the need for a loan resulted from my own poor money management. Failure to attend this meeting, they emphasized, would result in ineligibility for financial aid at any point in the future.

Among the topics covered at this meeting were budgeting and how to live frugally; the leader told attendees, as loan-holders, to consider purchasing generic rather than brand name goods and carpooling to save gas money.

As an economics major and member of a middle-class family, these tips were not new to me. But no amount of generic goods or carpooling could have saved me from taking out this student loan or the several that followed it.

In my junior year, I was offered a grant: about $16,000. This grant was still far too small to fully fund my attendance, so again, I took out loans. This year, I was offered only $1,500, so again, more loans.

When asked for details regarding the wildly fluctuating (and generally insufficient) aid, W&L has always been tight-lipped, offering only a canned reply: Your aid was calculated after “a careful review of your family’s income and assets.”

I plan to graduate at the end of this semester, not because I want to, but because I simply cannot afford to stay at W&L any longer. I qualified to write an honor’s thesis in economics, something only a handful of students have the opportunity to do, but graduating with honors would require me to pay for another semester.

I was forced to decline, leaving me disappointed that I could not experience this finale to my academic career and worried that I may be at a disadvantage as I pursue graduate studies.

I share this story for two key reasons. First, I want to be sure that prospective students are fully aware of W&L’s true generosity, or lack thereof. I highly encourage those considering W&L to be skeptical of the claims they make, in person, online, and in their brochures. Clearly, W&L is not always willing to stand behind the claims it makes.

More importantly, however, I want to add my story to the broader crusade against W&L’s stinginess. As already reported by The Spectator, Washington and Lee’s new meal plan policy forces students to pay for meal swipes that they may not need or use. Similarly, when campus dining venues were closed for construction, W&L failed to allow students to change their meal plans, despite a significant, semester-long reduction in food availability and quality.

This pattern of behavior inclines me to believe that Washington and Lee is taking advantage of its students, leaning upon their captivity to generate additional revenue despite the $2 billion which the university already has on hand.

If the university is sincerely interested in its students’ wellbeing, as it claims to be, then it is time for the administration to carefully reexamine its business practices. As it stands, I do not believe W&L’s actions reflect its stated mission.

But if penny-pinching — or even greed — motivates the university to deprive students of opportunity and choice, then I urge alumni and families to hold it accountable.

Washington and Lee is full of great professors and talented students; it is already a very good school, and I am grateful to attend it. But if W&L were what it claimed to be — if it were relentlessly generous and uncompromisingly mission-focused — it would be a truly great institution. I long for the day when Washington and Lee University lives up to its promises and puts its students first.