Dear Collegian and Kenyon community,

I wanted to correct the factual errors in Gabi Healy’s [Opinions] article, “Times’ ranking is only half the story,” published in the Sept. 18, 2014 Collegian. Gabi reports that there were only eight Pell-eligible students in the classes enrolling in 2012-2014. This is far from the truth. In fact, there were 47 Pell-eligible students in the class that enrolled in 2012, 38 in 2013 and 46 in 2014.  While the numbers are not as high as anyone would like to see, we have continued to make steady progress, from 5.5 percent of the class entering being Pell grant recipients in 2006 to 10.2 percent of the entering class in 2014. That is significant progress. Socioeconomic diversity continues to be a very high priority as we “compose” each entering class.

Please keep in mind that Pell grants are just one way to measure socioeconomic diversity and that the figures in the Times article do not present a full picture of the socioeconomic makeup of each entering class.  Pell just happens to be a readily available data point reported by the federal government.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Delahunty, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid