The Invisible Force Behind College Admissions

By Maggie McGrath and Matt Schifrin

Despite the windowless, bunker-like atmosphere inside the Erie conference room of the Sheraton in downtown Chicago, Galen Graber has to be impressed by his audience: a swath of the 1,500 top admissions and financial aid officials from 635 different schools who have gathered to set policies that determine which kids get into which college and how much money they'll receive.

Cutting to the chase, Graber, a consultant, launches by taking a poll: "How many of you would say that the primary motivation for offering students merit scholarships is to reward academic achievement?"

Not a single person raises his or her hand.

That response goes a long way to explain college tuition rates that have risen 12% in the last decade while median household income has declined 6% over the same period. And why student debt levels have hit $1.2 trillion, a burden that surpasses even U.S. household credit card debt.

Elite universities like Harvard, Stanford and others on the top of the FORBES list exist in their own orbit–they admit students without factoring in need, their multibillion-dollar endowments providing generous grants for the middle-class and poor. (Get into any Ivy League school with a family income of less than $60,000 and you can pretty much expect a free ride.)

Then there's the rest of American higher education: the 95% of schools that have puny endowments and thus almost complete dependence on tuition, admitting virtually any high school senior able to fill out an application. It's not a stable model. So those not raising their hands at Graber's seminar do so knowing that one of their core missions is to ensure that revenue–a.k.a. tuition–keeps flowing and growing, ever higher. Especially when so few constituencies–Sallie Mae and other guaranteed lenders, the GI Bill and other federal programs, parents–pay attention to what's driving the price that 22 million American college students pay.

Former Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg dies

  Ace Greenberg: 60 years at Bear Stearns NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Alan "Ace" Greenberg, a former CEO and chairman at Bear Stearns, has died at age 86.

He was at the helm of Bear Stearns for 15 years, until 1993, and was chairman when the brokerage firm went under in 2008.

Greenberg spent decades at the brokerage firm, seeing the company grow into an industry powerhouse and through its collapse, which fueled the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession.

"In many respects, he epitomized the American dream, rising from a clerk to the corner office during his 65 years with the firm," said JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon and Mary Erdoes, head of asset management, in an email sent Friday to employees.

JPMorgan (JPM) bought Bear Stearns for $10 a share after the firm's collapse.

Greenberg was known to answer his own phone and was always at work. In a 2010 interview with CNN, he said he never missed a day of work after fighting a bout of colon cancer at age 31 -- even when he contracted malaria on a trip to Africa in 1968.

Greenberg also served as a trustee at the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Public Library, and New York University.