Truths About Financial Aid
The article “Financial Aid at Williams” (spring 2016) states: “The sticker price of a Williams education has doubled in the last 30 years.” I am looking at my daughter’s tuition advice letter dated April 17,1997. Total charges for the 1997-1998 academic year were $29,350. Today, they are $63,290. The compound growth rate of total charges during that time was 4.4 percent, while the consumer price index was up 2.2 percent. The article could have done more to address the increase in the sticker price that makes financial aid so important. One clue to this increase can be found on p. 10 of the same edition of Williams Magazine (“Four Faculty Receive Tenure”). I don’t recall from my years at Williams any faculty hired with tenure to teach Latina/o Identities, Constructions, Contestations and Expressions.
—Tom Lockhart ’75, Golden Valley, Minn.