Ron Lieber of the New York Times: (any relation to Dean Ben, do you think?)

To me, the best pitch of all would invoke a specific debt. Universities tend not to remind alumni of the precise sum of their four or more years of scholarships. It would look too much like a bill. But I should be able to request that information, in today’s dollars, if I want to try to make it up and then some over my lifetime.

Though I don’t yet have as much control over my modest donation as I would like, I still intend to allocate the same percentage of my giving this year to my high school and college as I have in years past. And I think that every other former scholarship student has the same obligation to throw the rope back for others.

Do the schools want to state it this bluntly? Mr. Marx grew silent when I asked him this. He finally offered up the fact that even the full tuition charges do not come close to the costs for each student of running a college like Amherst. “I think every student, in that sense, is on financial aid,” he said.

Ms. Morey added, “I think one has more of a responsibility to be philanthropic in some way in their life” if they received aid from their college. “When I meet people who feel like they don’t want to support Amherst, I walk away just hoping that they’re giving to something. They were given an opportunity because of somebody else’s generosity, and it’s nice to think that’s going around and around.”

My answer?  Absolutely not.  Students with poor parents shouldn’t be expected to donate more after graduation than those of us with rich parents.  What’s the sense in that?  The whole point of financial aid is to level the playing field, even if we don’t always reach that ideal.  I would argue that we all have a responsibility to give back - not just to Amherst, but to the world.  It’s up to you to figure out how.