A Story of Financial Aid and College Funding at Princeton University

Abstract

As we face economic uncertainty and a rising student debt crisis, I seek to reexamine the common neoliberal debates around issues of college funding in America today. In the context of the financialized structures entrapping higher education, I write against the neoliberal logics that legitimized the change in federal funding practices in the 1980s and that has justified shifting the burden of responsibility for paying for college on students and their families. To this end I examine Princeton University as a case study against the neoliberal free-market logic through its long held commitment to affordability and access. Centered around Princeton’s need-based financial aid system, I demonstrate how Princeton has maintained itself, relying on commercial practices used in the arrangement of long-term human relations in the creation of a community akin to David Graeber’s “human economy.”