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them instruction in any or in all the prescribed branchesof study in any department of said institution, free of anytuition fee, or of any incidental charges to be paid to saiduniversity, unless such incidental charges shall have beenmade to compensate for damages heedlessly or purposelydone by the students to the property of said university.The said free instruction shall, moreover, be accorded tosaid students in consideration of their superior ability, andas a reward for superior scholarship in the academies andpublic schools of this State.Finally, the charter provided a statement about thenondenominational nature of the new institution.§ 4. And persons of every religious denomination, or ofno religious denomination, shall be equally eligible to alloffices and appointments.Publicly and privately, both Cornell and Whiteexpressed their long-held beliefs that higher educationshould be made available to women as well asmen and to peoples of all races. However, the swirl ofcontroversy surrounding the university’s nondenominationaldesign (some said godless) and its assignmentof the land-grant proceeds (some said usurpation) hadcreated sufficient ill-will within the New York Legislaturethat Cornell and White decided to delay pressingforward with their more radical designs at that time.Instead, the two men laid the groundwork for theseeventual changes in documents they created (e.g.,White substituted the word “person” for the word“man” wherever he could in the charter) and in theirspeeches and public correspondence.The first woman to attend university classes in analmost official status was Jennie Spencer, who hadsecured a state scholarship in 1870. While Ms. Spencerdid not complete her studies (it appears that she leftafter a week, having tired of the daily trek up the hillfrom downtown Ithaca that was necessitated by thelack of on-campus housing for women), she openedthe door for other women to enroll. Following Ms.Spencer’s unhappy experience, the university’s trusteesresolved, on March 19, 1872, that henceforth “womenbe admitted to the University upon the same terms asmen.” Making those terms the same depended on thebeneficence of Henry Sage, who donated $100,000 in1875 (about $7 million currently) to build, equip, andendow the Sage College (for women).In 1869—the university’s second year of operation—ahandful of international students were enrolled. AnAfrican American applied for admission as early as1869, and the university’s first Asian student, KanayeNagasawa of Kagoshima, Japan, enrolled in 1870.While it would be years before the university enrolledwomen and minority students in any noticeable measure,the precedents had been established in law andinstitutional action to open higher education to thenontraditional students of the day. Over the next onehundred years, the university would identify the resourcesrequired to provide financial aid for all needystudents and gradually codify an admissions approachthat would transform the student body.TransformationAlthough the elements of modern financial aid—merit-basedscholarships, need-based grants-in-aid, studentloans, and work-study opportunities—were eitherpresent at the university’s founding or were introducedsoon thereafter, Cornell’s admissions and financial-aidpolicies remained out of step with each otheruntil the middle of the twentieth century. Throughthe 1950’s, the process of admitting students was seenlargely as an effort to identify the most academicallyqualified individuals who presented themselves forconsideration. Engaged in essentially a passive process,Cornell’s admissions staff did not generally recruitstudents nor did they attempt to shape the makeup ofthe incoming class. Recruiting activities that did occurwere limited in nature—broadcasting informationabout the university, visiting high schools, workingwith alumni who identified potential candidates.The university had a long history of providing financialaid. Almost all scholarships were merit-based,although financial need was sometimes consideredin making awards. Loans and work-study opportunitieswere awarded generally based on financial need.The university’s first experiment with work-study wasEzra Cornell’s previously described offer to provideemployment for manual labor in constructing the newuniversity. The system of tuition-free state scholarships,also mentioned earlier, provided financial aidto selected New York State residents, though theassistance went to rich and poor alike. The first giftfundedstudent aid came from Andrew D. White, whooffered the university $1,000 in 1868 “to be appliedto the support and encouragement of meritoriousstudents.” As early as 1879, the university establishedfree scholarships that were to be awarded based on acombined assessment of financial need and meritoriousacademic conduct. Amos Padgham created thefirst endowed scholarship fund in 1892, initiating a3
trend to create financial-aid endowments that wouldremain productive and available far into the future.The university established the first student loan fundin 1883, assigning gifts that had been pledged in 1872by Ezra Cornell and other trustees to help the universityweather a financial crisis. The 1872 gift agreementcalled for the assets to be converted to financial aidonce the university achieved a measure of solvency.The second half of the twentieth century witnesseda massive transformation of college admissions andfinancial aid approaches, triggered by national eventsand Cornell-specific policy changes.• Competition for the best applicants – During the middleof the twentieth century most large universitiesextended the recruitment view of their undergraduateprograms to encompass a national andinternational focus. Increasingly, institutions ofhigher education viewed themselves as competingfor the best students and deployed financial-aidresources to meet that challenge. Also, studentsbecame more active participants in this process,initiating a pattern of applying to multiple institutionsto insure a place at a top choice.As an example of this phenomenon, Cornell’strustees created a “national scholarship program”in June 1944 designed to:…draw from all sections of the nation students who representthe finest type of college material in their respectivelocalities, and to enable the University successfully to competewith other institutions which are now better equippedwith scholarships and which have hitherto held a distinctadvantage in attracting the most desirable students.This initiative has since evolved into the MeinigFamily Cornell National Scholars Program.• Formation of the Ivy League – Created in 1945 as anathletic conference to apply only to football andexpanded in 1954 to apply to all intercollegiatesports, the “league,” which included Cornell fromthe beginning, affirmed “the observance of commonpractices in academic standards and eligibilityrequirements and the administration of needbasedfinancial aid, with no athletic scholarships.”• World War II and the GI Bill – Besides its general effecton the nation and the world in human andeconomic terms, World War II had two major impactson higher education. The first was the ebb ofstudents attending the university during the warand then the flood of returning and new studentsthat occurred in the peace that followed. Cornellexperienced a 24 percent drop in enrollment duringWorld War II followed by a 73 percent increaseimmediately thereafter. The university’s fifthpresident, Edmund Ezra Day, observed in his 1947report to the trustees that the university had “…amoral obligation to provide educational opportunityfor the maximum number of well-qualifiedapplicants who can be handled without impairmentof the quality of Cornell training….”That surge in enrollment was heightened by thesecond factor, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Actof 1944, popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights,which provided support for education, amongother benefits. In the peak year of 1947, veteransaccounted for 49 percent of U.S. college enrollment,and by 1956, when the first bill ended,2,230,000 veterans had attended higher educationunder its auspices. (At Cornell, 77 percent of allmale students were veterans in 1946-47.)• Government-funded financial-aid programs – As summarizedin a 1985 Cornell study,The role of the federal government in student aid beganin 1935 with the National Youth Administration. It continuedto evolve with the G.I. Bill in 1944 and the NationalDefense Education Act in 1958. By 1965, the conceptof general aid for college students gained wide legislativesupport with the creation of the first general federalscholarship program, the expansion of wage subsidies forcollege students and the creation of a federally insuredstudent loan program. In the 1970’s, the philosophy ofaid based on financial need was established throughoutfederal aid programs….• Adoption of the uniform methodology need analysis andfinancial-aid packaging – Beginning in the mid-1950’s, many colleges and universities agreed toa common standard of need analysis. This agreementwas reached through the auspices of theCollege Board. The 1950’s also saw the introductionof the concept of “financial-aid packaging,”whereby government and institutional resourcesare combined in the form of loans, work, andgrants and awarded to the student as a bundle.In 1958, Cornell established the Office of FinancialAid, in which, according to the university’ssixth president, Deane Waldo Malott, were tobe “centralized matters relating to scholarships,grants-in-aid, loan funds, and student employment.”In 1962, President Malott reorganized theoffices of admissions and financial aid, appointing4
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Page 8 and 9: 2. To provide financial assistance
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Page 14 and 15: Cornell subscribes to several of th
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Page 18 and 19: Cornell’s practice is to include
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