October 10, 2001: Features

Teaching, Learning and Financial Aid

Harold Shapiro markedly strengthened undergraduate education at Princeton — and made it available to more students

By J. I. Merritt ’66

1988 photo by Robert Matthews; 2001 photo by Frank Wojciechowski

In the late fall of 1997, Princeton’s director of financial aid, Don Betterton, sat down with Harold T. Shapiro *64 to discuss the proposed financial-aid budget for the next academic year. Because of the president’s strong interest in the subject, his usual practice was to review the numbers before they were presented to the university’s budget-setting Priorities Committee, and Betterton wasn’t expecting anything unusual.

“There were signals from the Priorities Committee to ask for a modest improvement to our aid program but not to request anything out of the ordinary,” recalls Betterton, who was representing the faculty and student committees on undergraduate admission and financial aid. “After we’d been over the budget, which basically adjusted for inflation and added a few enhancements, Harold asked, ‘What would it take to go far beyond what your committees would normally want to do?’ That was the question that got our financial-aid initiatives rolling. He was asking in effect, ‘Rather than just talking about access to Princeton, what can we do to make our aid program unique — not merely to promote access, but to ensure it?’”

Princeton’s “need-blind” admission policy admits students without regard to their ability to pay its tuition and fees, which then totaled $28,435 annually. A student on financial aid paid a discounted rate and made up the difference with money from work, a loan from the university, and (if needed) a scholarship. Shapiro and his like-minded provost, Jeremiah Ostriker, who over the next four years would become his point man in enacting sweeping changes in Princeton’s financial-aid policies, were concerned about the effect of loans on the admission of lower-income students, particularly minorities.

“It was something I’d been thinking about since the day I arrived at Princeton,” recalls Shapiro, an economist who at the time was completing his 10th year in office. “Our admission policy was need blind, but it still meant that lower- and lower-middle-income families had to mortgage their futures to send their kids here, and I didn’t think that was reasonable. Our potential applicant pool included many talented students from these income levels, and we wanted to remove the last barriers that would keep them from coming here.”

Traditionally, administrators at Princeton and other highly competitive private universities have urged families to look on student loans as “investments” that will pay off down the road in enhanced career opportunities and earnings. But unlike middle- and upper-income families, says Shapiro, “lower-income families are not used to taking out and paying off loans and doing the kinds of cost-benefit calculations that economists, I can assure you, like to make.”

A few months after the meeting between Betterton and Shapiro, the university announced that for future entering classes it would eliminate loans for students with family incomes below $40,000 (a figure close to the national median), replacing them with outright grants, and reduce the loan burden for families with incomes between $40,000 and $57,500; it would also disregard home equity in calculating the needs of students with family incomes under $90,000. Three years later, Princeton replaced all loans with grants, removed home equity for everyone, and extended need-blind admission — a policy that in the past had applied only to residents of the U.S. and Canada — to all international students.

Privately at least, administrators at other Ivy schools have criticized Princeton for upsetting a tacit understanding to stay within each other’s range of financial-aid offerings, arguing that shifting resources to scholarships inevitably means less for libraries, laboratories, and other basic needs. Shapiro believes that most schools of Princeton’s caliber can afford the greater commitment. Indeed, virtually all of its chief competitors have taken steps to improve their aid packages, although according to Betterton, none so far has matched Princeton’s.

By 2004, when the financial-aid initiatives are fully phased in, they will result in a budget increase of about $12 million, a considerable but not overwhelming sum for an institution with an endowment of $8.4 billion. In the meantime, as one senior observer of American higher education has put it, Princeton has become “the poster child of need-based aid,” and it is reaping the benefits. For this year’s entering Class of 2005, minority enrollments are up significantly, while Princeton’s “yield” — the percentage of admitted applicants who matriculate — is 71 percent, the highest ever (in 1987, the year before Shapiro became president, it was 56 percent). Moreover, students on financial aid constitute 46 percent of the class, compared to a low of 38 percent in the 1997—98 freshman class. Finally, the yield for “Academic 1s” — the brightest students in the applicant pool — is also up, much to the faculty’s pleasure; Ostriker attributes the increase in part to an improved ability to compete for students offered merit scholarships (a benefit excluded from Princeton’s financial-aid basket) by schools such as Stanford and Duke.

Shapiro’s conviction that Princeton ought to be accessible to anyone of intellect and character, regardless of financial circumstances or nationality, stemmed from a sense of institutional noblesse oblige and moral responsibility, themes that shaped his vision for Princeton and the policies and programs that flowed from it. It was a vision that emphasized community and the special importance of learning — defined in the broadest sense — in a residential campus setting. Shapiro says he is probably proudest of the various presidential teaching initiatives established during his tenure, among them the sponsorship of visiting professors renowned for their teaching and the establishment of a center devoted to improving the pedagogical methods of faculty members and graduate students who serve as teaching assistants.

Other hallmarks of his administration include the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, which supports postdoctoral fellows with a special commitment to teaching; the Council on Science and Technology, dedicated to teaching science and engineering to humanists; new centers for genomics, finance, and religion; a slew of new buildings; Frist Campus Center; the systematic renovation of Princeton’s collegiate-gothic dormitories and other aging structures; the decision to proceed with construction of a sixth residential college to accommodate a 10-percent increase in the number of undergraduates; the internationalization of Princeton, symbolized by the expansion of Woodrow Wilson’s famous phrase to read “Princeton in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations”; long-term initiatives to further diversify the campus community and to curb the abuse of alcohol by undergraduates; and — last but far from least — the completion of the five-year Anniversary Campaign, which started with a goal of $750 million and wound up raising $1.14 billion.

Princeton’s 18th president didn’t accomplish all this on his own, of course, but he proved markedly adept at forging agreements on common goals, then persuading people to work together to achieve them. Those who experienced firsthand Shapiro’s understated yet inspirational leadership and innate decency unabashedly gush about him. Says Associate Provost S. Georgia Nugent ’73, “On rare occasions I saw Harold angry, but it was only when he felt somebody had been mistreated. Any time I had a meeting with him I left feeling on top of the world — he made us think we could accomplish anything.”

Shapiro announced his retirement at the start of the 2000—01 academic year and left office on June 15. During the last nine months of his administration he was showered with praise from every Princeton constituency, a kind of extended applause echoed by the drawn-out standing ovation he received at this year’s Commencement. Professor of English and medievalist John V. Fleming *63 likened the long, affectionate goodbye to “ordeal by adulation.”

The plaudits are all the more remarkable considering his administration’s rocky start. Shapiro came to Princeton in 1988 from the University of Michigan, where he had served as a professor and administrator for 24 years, the last eight as president. A native of Montreal and a graduate of McGill University, he had earned his Ph.D. in economics in three years at Princeton, but since leaving for Michigan, in 1964, he’d had little contact with the campus. The first person appointed to head Princeton since 1868 who had not come from the faculty, he was an outsider in a place that can be harshly insular, and during his first years in office Shapiro and the university endured a sometimes painful adjustment to each other.

Because of Princeton’s small size and tradition of collegiality, no president can function effectively without the faculty’s support, and in Shapiro’s case it was conspicuously lacking. His problems were compounded by unfavorable comparisons between his management style and that of his predecessor, William Bowen *58, and by budget cuts he imposed to correct a projected deficit — as well as by what economics professor Alan Blinder ’67 called “a failure of salesmanship and communication to the students and faculty” in regard to the cuts. When Emory Elliott, an English professor who later left Princeton for UCLA, deplored the cuts at a 1989 faculty meeting, many of his colleagues burst into sustained applause.

Over time, matters improved as people grew comfortable with Shapiro and he, in turn, gained a critical mass of institutional knowledge. Comparing how Bowen and Shapiro communicated with the faculty, Vice President Thomas H. Wright ’62 observes, “Although each in his own way did it very well, Bill and Harold had completely different ways of connecting. If you published a new book or won a prize, Bill would write a note congratulating you. Harold wouldn’t write you a note, but if he ran into you on the sidewalk it would emerge from the conversation that he had read your book. As the faculty changed and people experienced Harold, they began to see how much he appreciated their work.”

No longer the proverbial Stranger Who Came to Town, Shapiro by his fifth year in office was visibly more at ease in the job. He launched a strategic-planning initiative that led to the Anniversary Campaign. Despite a range of outside commitments, including chairing a presidential commission on bioethics, and a brutal travel schedule to raise money from Princeton’s far-flung alumni, he managed to teach one semester each year and to put in place a host of new initiatives. He turned 60 in 1995, during his eighth year in office, but showed no signs of slowing down. Quite the opposite. As Ostriker told the Daily Princetonian on the anniversary of Shapiro’s 10th year in office, “He is full of new ideas. He has been steadily more open, confident, outgoing, and innovative rather than becoming stale. Most administrators start out with a burst of energy and then fizzle out. In his case, it is the other way around.”

As Wright notes, Shapiro had “the tremendous good fortune of the timing of his presidency” — the fact that the Anniversary Campaign occurred during the greatest economic expansion in the nation’s history. The dollars that flowed to Princeton’s coffers gave Shapiro the resources to implement his financial-aid initiatives and other programs while keeping faculty salaries tracking comfortably ahead of inflation. It’s ironic, observes Wright, that both Shapiro and his Harvard counterpart, Neil L. Rudenstine ’56 (who also left office this year, and who served as Princeton’s provost under Bowen) will be remembered as powerhouse fundraisers, for neither was constitutionally inclined toward pumping alumni for cash. “Their real strengths were as visionary, strategic thinkers.”

Assessing Shapiro’s presidency, those who worked closely with him offer a variety of perspectives. “Harold was an excellent fundraiser when he focused on it, though it was not one of his favorite pastimes,” says Van Zandt Williams, Jr. ’65, the vice president for development. “He tended to work very well with narrow groups of people who shared his vision for what the university could become in some particular area. He was never an arm-twister, nor did he try to make things happen in an unnatural way. As for his management style, it was pretty laid back, and he did not get involved in the details of university operations unless it was crucial to implementing a particular decision. His genius was his ability to see the big picture. He was remarkably undistracted by the day-to-day details and was always able to keep his team working on the things that would make the greatest difference in the long run. He properly assumed that if he gave strategic direction, the smart folks around him would figure out how to get it done.”

Adds Williams, “He was also unafraid of challenging the established order, even if it seemed bizarre at the time.” As an example, he cites Shapiro’s decision — later rescinded — in the fall of 1991 to ban beer kegs at all campus functions, including Reunions. “It brought attention in a very forceful way to a crucial issue” — alcohol abuse — “even if many folks thought he was tilting at windmills,” Williams says. “I was always grateful that he could see things quite whole, and would often ask simple questions that challenged us to return to first principles to find the answer.”

Ostriker points to Shapiro’s ability “to pick a few issues that were overwhelmingly important to him and stay focused on them so as to effect real changes. For example, he really wanted to internationalize the Princeton undergraduate experience, and as a consequence we’ve had a dramatic increase in the number of international students and students studying abroad. It’s very easy for a president to spend his time putting out fires and lose sight of what he wants to achieve, but that never happened to Harold.”

In the view of Robert H. Rawson, Jr. ’66, chairman of the trustee executive committee, “Harold’s presidency was successful in part because he approached it as an enabler — he saw his job as making it possible for others to do their thing. Whether dealing with faculty, trustees, or students, he liked to say, ‘Here’s an opportunity for us all. Let’s make something of it together.’ He’s also an extraordinarily considerate human being, which is something a lot of people didn’t see immediately because he’s somewhat reserved.”

Like many others, Shirley Tilghman, a professor of molecular biology and Shapiro’s successor as president, emphasizes Shapiro’s powers of persuasion and his moral dimension. “Whenever there was a thorny issue on the table — one that was complex, with the possibility of people coming down on multiple sides of it — he would bring great clarity to the discussion by asking, ‘What is the right thing to do?’ It set a tone for the way we did business and led to the many things he accomplished.”

She also credits him with reinvigorating teaching at Princeton. “Every few years, he brought along some new initiative designed to remind us on the faculty that teaching is our most important mission — not just the need to put in a certain number of hours but to do it in an interesting and invigorating way. However seriously you take such ratings, it’s no coincidence that U.S. News & World Report’s annual college issue consistently ranks Princeton at the top. My involvement on the presidential search committee gave me the opportunity to talk with educators around the country, and it’s clear from what people told me that no place offers a better education. Harold kept our eyes focused on teaching in a way that was light-handed but continually reminded us why we are here.”

In the months preceding Shapiro’s departure, Tilghman adds, “He gave me lots of advice, all of it gratefully received. On a personal level he warned that the job is like a black hole in space — it will suck up every ounce of you if you let it. He said that you are the only person who will set reasonable limits that allow for a family and intellectual life. I have two kids, and as with Harold, family for me is very important. And you know, when you do set those limits, things continue to work just fine!”

Says Janet Dickerson, the vice president for campus life, “It’s evident that he lives the ethical values he preaches and by example challenges us to do as well.” She cites a small but telling incident. Her office was working with students to put together a “climate survey” to probe undergraduate attitudes toward Princeton, and “we thought we’d get a better response if we mailed the survey with a cover letter from Harold.” As a further inducement, someone came up with the idea of a lottery for those who returned the survey, with a pair of airline tickets as the prize. The students were enthusiastic, but Shapiro regarded a lottery as inappropriate — offer it if you want, he told them, but forget about any endorsement from me. In the end, the survey went out under his signature, but instead of a few students winning airline tickets, everyone received a coupon for a blend-in at Thomas Sweet’s.

Robert Hollander ’55, a professor of European literature, recalls a meeting he had with Shapiro and his wife, Vivian, to show them an early version of his computer-based, multimedia Princeton Dante Project. “Harold was extremely helpful when we were trying to get the Dante project off the ground. It was late morning, and at a certain point Vivian said she was really enjoying this but had to leave for a lunch date. Harold stayed. He had his weekly noon luncheon with his cabinet, but 12 o’clock came and went and he didn’t budge. He started asking questions — ‘Can you do this? What about that?’ — et cetera. He stayed until 12:30 and was more than half an hour late to his cabinet meeting! For a faculty member, that sort of thing sends a wonderful message about presidential priorities.”

In the beginning of Shapiro’s administration, says Hollander, “I was far from alone in doubting his abilities, but I can’t remember anyone leaving the presidency more graciously or more beloved. He worked for his success, and it’s a very moving story. He came from a long way back in the pack and did a magnificent job.”

Former PAW editor J. I. Merritt ’66 is a freelance writer in Pennington, N.J.