Columbia's administration, it seems, is finally taking undergraduate financial aid seriously. Their decision to replace loans with grants for lower-income families is a positive step, and will help these students manage Columbia's enormous tuition costs. Nevertheless, the choice to exclude students in the School of General Studies from the policy reflects poorly on the University's commitment to making Columbia affordable to all undergraduates, regardless of age.

GS students hail from a diverse set of backgrounds, often coming to Columbia after years of travel, military service, or professional careers. The school employs a limited merit-based scholarship system, instead of the need-based system used by all the other undergraduate schools. While the pool of available funds for these scholarships is currently growing at an impressive rate, GS students typically, and unfairly, graduate with significantly higher debt than their classmates in CC or SEAS.

The debt issue alone makes financial aid at GS very important, primarily because it discourages potential students from applying to the school to begin with. Many current GS students say they feel slighted by the University, which only perpetuates the pre-existing sense of exclusion in the undergraduate community. While General Studies Dean Peter Awn held a town hall meeting to offer the students a explanation, official clarification from top-level University administrators could go a long way toward repairing damage done from the financial aid reform slight.

In the end, however, actions speak louder than words. If the University is genuinely committed to the School of General Studies, it will promise to use some of the $440 million allotted to undergraduate financial aid in the recently announced capital campaign for GS students. Only then will Columbia rightly live up to its commitment toward making a world-class undergraduate education affordable to students of all backgrounds.