Eight years ago, Princeton announced a dramatic change in its financial aid policies. Beginning with that announcement, many followed suit by replacing loans with grants, becoming need-blind to international students, and reducing the student self-help contribution, among other improvements. At this point, the other Ivies, MIT, and Stanford have together made a total of 24 announcements of enhancements to financial aid.

The benefits of the changes are clear. In that single year, the number of Princeton students from minority backgrounds increased by 12 percent. When Harvard eliminated the family contribution for households making less than $40,000 and reduced it for those making less than $60,000, the number of students from households in those income brackets increased by a quarter. Over the past 30 years, Columbia has led the Ivies in admitting and retaining a diverse student body, but that tradition is a result of 30 years of financial aid policies that made a Columbia education affordable to all students. It's time again for us to recommit to that tradition.

We believe that Columbia will make that commitment. We have to. Not only are there clear moral reasons for affordable education, but Columbia is quickly falling behind its peers. CalTech is the only school ahead of us in the U.S. News and World Report ranking not to have made an announcement of a major financial aid initiative in recent years. And indeed, the University acknowledges that financial aid is a pressing need. University President Lee Bollinger, Dean Austin Quigley, and others have declared that endowing financial aid is a cornerstone of the new capital campaign.

If that's the case-and we see no reason to believe it's not-now is the time for Columbia to announce sweeping changes to its financial aid policies.

Our policies as they stand are a burden on current students and a deterrent to new ones. There's no doubt that college is expensive, and many would even argue that paying some portion of that expense builds character and helps students value their education. Very well. But for many Columbia students, the cost of attendance is so high that it restricts their choices both at school and after they graduate.

Put another way, any delay in announcing a dramatically improved financial aid system is a missed opportunity. Current juniors and seniors are planning their careers with an eye to their finances rather than their interests. Sophomores are about to start applying for internships they may have to turn down if they can't find funding, and first-years are trying to balance work-study with student life. Current high school students are trying to decide whether or not they can afford to apply.

An announcement on financial aid, made now, will affect all these decisions for the better. And, presented properly, an announcement would be a good advertisement for our capital campaign.

After all, many of the University's biggest donors were once recipients of financial aid themselves. John Kluge and Robert Kraft have both talked about the impact of Columbia's financial aid policies during their study at Columbia. And studies have shown that students who receive grants donate more after graduation than students whose aid packages are made up of loans.

Of course, any benefits from alumni-giving will come years from now, and paying for these policies in the meantime is a major concern. But all the evidence suggests that in the long run Columbia will be able to afford them. After all, if raising the money to endow (a significant portion of) financial aid over the next seven years weren't likely, Bollinger and Quigley wouldn't promise it as part of the capital campaign. Too much is at stake.

In the meantime, Columbia should dip into the central operating budget to support financial aid. Yale's reformed policies cost $5 million more a year than our current ones, for a similar-sized student body. While this is a large expense, it's not more than the University has advanced on other projects: Nicholas Dirks' efforts to improve our economics department will cost $10 million and the recent initiatives on faculty diversity will cost $15 million. As important as those two efforts are, financial aid might be more important.

We believe that Columbia can and must publicly commit to reforming financial aid now, for the sake of current students and future ones.

Seth Flaxman, CC '07, is the current CCSC president. Former CCSC presidents Michelle Oh, CC '06; Matthew Harrison, CC '05; Miklos Vasarhelyi, CC '04; and Michael Novielli, CC'03, all contributed to this article.