Until the administration contributes meaningfully to financial aid, very little in this picture will change. As students, we should be outraged as we only receive a cost of living adjustment. We need more. Then, the administration needs to make some tough choices. Now is the time to ask the Dean to do what he asked us to do to ask the Kennedy School programs and Kennedy School professors that can afford their activities at funding levels lower than today s levels to donate to financial aid.
Public leadership calls for asking and answering the tough questions.
In the end, such an exercise might have the makings of a good Kennedy School case study. This year, the Kennedy School will offer many trained public leaders to private consulting firms. These newly trained public leaders, some of whom I know very well, will make very good private sector consultants. These trained public leaders will be asked by their new employers to solve some tough problems for their clients some public but mostly private. We should try to get some of these new graduates back, in their new roles as private sector consultants, to look at how the Kennedy School handles itself fiscally.