Star News notes, "As Blacks enrolled in predominantly white colleges and southern states did not invest in Black colleges, HBCU’s were put at a distinct disadvantage. Today, many of these institutions are struggling to keep pace with white institutions in terms of course offerings, facilities, athletics, and student services." Yet, Black Ivy League schools enroll more black National Merit Scholars than elite schools, such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, perhaps because these students have financial aid independent of the school they attend. As reported by The Washington Post, "Top-tier schools—including Howard, Hampton University, and Spelman and Morehouse colleges—vie with Harvard and Princeton for top black students and faculty." Morehouse College drew national publicity in 2008, when its valedictorian, Joshua Packwood, a white student, explained that he opted to attend Morehouse, when he had received full scholarship offers from both Morehouse and Columbia University. The relative size of the institutions and their respective endowments also affect each school's relative ability to provide elite instruction. For example, Cornell University's freshman class included 371 black and multiracial students, which is more than the freshman class of Dillard. From 1999 to 2007, Ivy League colleges launched initiatives to make higher education more affordable, to the point that students from low income families can graduate debt-free. The University of Pennsylvania has expanded its financial aid program to the point that all students qualifying for financial aid can graduate debt-free. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education notes that the significant increase in financial aid by Harvard and other Ivy League schools will make it difficult for other schools to compete for top African-American students. A study of the average wages of alumni conducted by Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Michael Greenstone, found that between the 1970s and the 1990s, "there is a wage penalty" in attending a HBCU over those attending historically white colleges, "resulting in a 20% decline in the relative wages of HBCU graduates between the two decades." Unlike the Ivy League, the main focus of the Black Ivy League has been on undergraduate education. However, Howard University has several graduate-level professional programs, including a medical school, and Morehouse at one time had a medical school, which has since become independent. There are two other historically black medical schools not affiliated with Black Ivy League-identified colleges, located in Nashville, Tennessee, and Los Angeles, California. , these four medical schools "reportedly account[ed] for more