ELITE ONLY NEED APPLY

The story made the front page of the New York Times and other papers. The director of admissions at Princeton was caught sneaking into a special website set up to let Yale applicants know whether they'd been accepted. Although the Princeton official's motives were not revealed, the break-in was thought to be an academic Watergate, an illicit attempt to filch information on what the competition was up to. It touched off furrowed-brow effusions on "heightened craziness about admissions decisions" and "frantic" competitiveness. The fuss about two elite Ivy League colleges drew national press, but another story on higher education was far more disturbing to those who care about democracy in America. This was a report issued by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which found that nearly 170,000 high school graduates who were the brightest in their classes would have to forgo college next fall because they can't afford rising tuitions and fees. A major reason they can't is a lack of adequate financial aid because of stagnation or cutbacks in need-based state aid programs and federal Pell grants.

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