KSG Recants Some Aid Changes

Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr., who sparked protests last month when he said alumni could only collect financial aid from the school for the first three years after graduation, announced Thursday that current students will be exempt from limits on aid eligibility.

Nye had previously said the school’s budget crunch would force him to cap spending on the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP), which offers debt relief to KSG graduates earning under $50,000 a year in public sector jobs.

Since the KSG established LRAP in 1987, the school has not placed limits on the length of time during which graduates can collect benefits. Nye’s move to set a three-year limit on eligibility sparked an outcry from student leaders, who responded by staging an all-night protest outside the school.

In an e-mail to students Thursday, Nye said that current students and alumni who already receive benefits “will be eligible for LRAP support as long as they meet the qualifying criteria that were in effect when they enrolled at KSG.”

In an e-mail to The Crimson Friday, Nye, who will step down from his administrative post at the end of the semester, assured that his as-yet-unnamed successor will honor the school’s commitment to exempt current students from the eligibility cap.

But Nye said he could only guarantee three years of LRAP eligibility to students who enter the school after this semester. “For the future incoming classes, the decisions will be made by the next dean,” he wrote.

Nye said last month’s move was necessary to level the school’s spending on the program at $200,000 a year. He said Friday that his most recent decision to exempt current students and alumni from the eligibility cap means he will have to raise an additional $50,000 from external donors.

“If I and my successor cannot raise the external funds to cover the existing students, the difference will have to come out of the [KSG] operating budget,” Nye said.

‘A PUNCH IN THE STOMACH’

Nye’s decision Thursday ended an emotional roller-coaster ride for some KSG students, who had intended to pursue public service careers but worried that the LRAP eligibility limits would leave them too deep in debt.

Erin C. Rogers, a student in the KSG program for mid-career professionals, said Nye’s March e-mail announcing the LRAP eligibility cap “was like a punch in the stomach.”

“I literally couldn’t breathe for a few minutes,” Rogers said.

Rogers, who borrowed heavily to attend the one-year program, said she calculated she would need to earn $80,000 a year to repay her student loans on her own.

“If this program didn’t exist, I would have to give up working in the nonprofit sector and completely change directions in my life,” Rogers said.

Rogers said she never earned more than $35,000 a year as an environmental activist in Texas. She directed a group fighting against a nuclear waste dump on the Mexican border, and later worked for the state chapter of the Sierra Club.

Rogers said she hopes to work as an advocate for sustainable energy after graduation.

Without LRAP, she said, she would have to “take a job that doesn’t align with my principles and my goals.”

‘MISSION DRIFT’

In his e-mail to students Thursday, Nye said he was “impressed by the eloquent arguments in favor of continuing our LRAP program, because they demonstrated your strong commitment to public service, a commitment which I share.”

KSG spokesperson Jesus Mena said that Nye’s policies in his eight years as dean have significantly increased the percentage of the school’s students who pursue public sector careers.

In June 1996, during Nye’s first year as dean, 45 percent of students in the school’s master’s of public policy (MPP) program took private sector jobs after graduation. According to Mena, Nye “was alarmed that we were suffering ‘mission drift.’”

In 1999, Nye decided to offer LRAP benefits to graduates earning less than $50,000 a year. Previously, LRAP only granted aid to alums who made under $32,000 a year.

In the last half-decade, the program’s budget has increased from $44,000 to approximately $200,000 today.

Whereas 11 graduates received LRAP benefits in 1999, 65 alums collect aid from the program this year.

By last June, the number of MPP graduates entering the private sector had fallen to 20 percent.

According to Mena, 58 percent of the 2003 MPP graduating class took government jobs, and 22 percent went to work for nonprofit organizations.

“We no longer worry about ‘mission drift,’” Mena wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson. “Our challenge now, appropriately, is affording to hold on to these gains.”

‘LACK OF TRANSPARENCY’

Despite the program’s success, some say that it has not gone far enough.

Bridger E. McGaw ’97, a marshal for the MPP class of 2004, said Nye has displayed “an egregious lack of understanding of the financial burden that students who go into public service face when they graduate.”

McGaw also said he was concerned by the administration’s “lack of transparency” on the LRAP issue. “Decisions were made without informing the elected student representatives.”

Tim Sultan, a mid-career student who is president of the Kennedy School Student Government, wrote in an e-mail yesterday that “if students had been involved earlier in the process, we would have shared our priorities with the dean before the changes had been made and there would have been no need for a protest.”

According to McGaw, last fall Nye quietly ended a KSG policy that gave aid to graduates who join the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program, a federal initiative.

Through a rigorous nationwide selection process, the PMF program selects graduate students for paid federal posts. The two-year program pays fellows an annual salary of approximately $40,000, McGaw said.

McGaw, who worked as a public affairs officer in the Clinton White House, has been selected for the PMF program.

“The Kennedy School promised loan forgiveness to students who pursued this program. My class…had that taken away from us,” McGaw said. “The administration has cut funding that is specifically-geared for the PMF program and moved PMF into the general pool for LRAP funding. So you have more people who need assistance and still have less funding.”

‘A VALUABLE FIRST STEP’

Sultan said Nye’s decision Thursday to exempt current students and alumni from new LRAP eligibility caps “is a valuable first step.”

“We all thank Dean Nye for his leadership in making this possible,” Sultan said.

But Sultan said that alleviating the financial burden on students who take public sector jobs also requires a commitment from Mass Hall.

In January 2003, University President Lawrence H. Summers announced a $14 million initiative through which the University will dole out grants to graduate students who pursue careers in public service or research.

Summers also unveiled the Harvard Educational Loan Program (HELP), a partnership with Citibank that offers students loans at a below-market rate of 4.1 percent.

“President Summers has provided an extensive opportunity now to take on low-interest loans. That’s great,” McGaw said.

But he cautioned that the initiative was far from a long-term solution.

“If we can’t afford to pay the loans the back, what’s the good of giving us the loans in the first place?” McGaw said.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reaches at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.