Absolutely, its not just financial aid but also how much donations you can pull from alumni and their families.

That's certainly a valid suspicion, given the mercenary nature of university management these days, but is it actually borne by facts?

This question nerd sniped me quite hard, and I'm unfortunately having trouble answering it. I figured a first step would be to look at aid as a portion of cost of attendance over time, tracked against affirmative action endeavors. The problem I'm having is finding consistent measures of both aid and COA, let alone over time. If anyone knows a data source that proffers this I'd be quite curious.