Dear Shalom,
Rabbi Benjy Kramer says that "Tuition assistance committees are faced with a very difficult task of distributing tzedaka money to people who need it". That is the problem in a nutshell. The "people who need it" are families who spend responsibly and work full-time at skilled professions. They should not have to receive tzedakah. A system which forces them to apply for charity and consider themselves recipients of public charity intrinsically and unjustifiably violates their dignity, no matter how "seriously, sensitively, and discreetly" the committees do their work.
The core issue is moral, not financial. Until that is recognized, efforts at reforming the system will amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The irony is that moral solutions may cost much less, and yield schools more students and resources, than blunt-instrument attempts to lower maximum tuition or increase scholarships.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Aryeh Klapper
Dean, Center for Modern Torah Leadership
