Quote :

"PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) -- Attending Stanford University next year will be a lot more affordable for some undergraduate students. The university said Wednesday it plans to eliminate tuition for students with annual family incomes totaling less than $100,000. It also will pay most room and board for students with families making less than $60,000. Financial aid director Karen Cooper says the move comes as middle-income parents express concern about paying for a Stanford education. Stanford tuition is expected to rise to $36,000 in the fall. Room and board will cost about $11,000. About a third of the university's 6,700 undergraduates are expected to qualify for the tuition break. "

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/20/pf/college/stanford_tuition.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

I can't imagine many other universities doing the same thing, but its nice to see that some are trying to make higher education more affordable.

2/20/2008 6:05:12 PM

It sounds nice. However, to save 36k a year, Id take off half a year, or whatever, to make sure you were under 100k income.

Why not just make it cheaper across the board? For everyone?

2/20/2008 6:08:00 PM

This is full of win.

Kudos to Stanford University.

2/20/2008 7:41:23 PM

This move probably has more to do with increasing prestige than giving the poor folks a break.

This is actually a bit of contention between the lesser liberal arts schools and the best of the best like Stanford. Basically the inequity between schools stems from their respective endowments. The endowments of the big ivies have increased so much lately that they have large portions of their budget paid completely from the earnings of the endowment. For example, Stanford in 2005 financed 20% of its budget with the endowment. A school like Stanford can afford to basically cut the brighter kids a better deal. They are buying the best of the best for their school. In contrast lesser schools will only continue to decrease in rank as the higher rank big endowment schools gobble up more and more of the intellectual resources.

There is talk of making Harvard free. This would effectively crush their competition. Make no mistake this is not really about helping poor people. Its about academic domination.

So I approve.

Of course there is more to it than just that, big endowments also go towards funding named chairs and stuff like that which draws in the uber-researchers/teachers. Basically the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, intellectually. Well actually that's not true, everybody gets better just not to scale. Just like the economy. We are all getting richer, just not to scale.

[Edited on February 20, 2008 at 9:08 PM. Reason : .]

2/20/2008 9:08:09 PM

Well, that pretty much covered what I was going to say about the endowments. A free Harvard education would immediately be the choice of every single high caliber senior in the country and frankly, the world. About the only other schools those best and brightest would even consider would be a school that has a better rep in a particular field like MIT, but I suspect that would being to level off as Harvard continued to bring in higher caliber students across the board.

2/20/2008 9:17:06 PM

[support]

MIT is awesome about this I hear. Tuition is ridiculously, but they basically have a policy that if you get in, then you'll get it paid for, if resources don't add up, they're take care of you one way or the other. I hear a lot of people do ROTC so it's paid for. But one way or the other, if you're good enough to go, there's some organization in the World that will pay for you to go under a reasonable agreement.

I've also heard some rummors from accounts that I know that Harvard had people getting on their nuts about their endowment. Like, the fund is essentially for the general purpose of the school/students, but someone once did the math and figured out that they could basically pay for everyone's complete tuition until the end of time off of the endowment's earnings because the school pretty much has more money than God. And at the same time, there is a small number of people going there who are severely financially troubled.

2/20/2008 9:45:56 PM

Yeah, Harvard's endowment topped the 35 billion dollar mark a this year. Thing is, not surprisingly I suppose, the Harvard endowment is earning something like 16-20% annually because it's managed by some of the best financial minds on the planet.

[Edited on February 20, 2008 at 10:20 PM. Reason : agg]

2/20/2008 10:20:08 PM

Let's Play "Unintended Consequences"....

The possibility of free tuition will create a mass onslaught of "needy" applicants.

Stanford, of course, will have to turn away the majority of this deserving students.

People will complain, the media will snap-to, and Stanford will take charisma hits for being unfeeling, and greedy. How they should open up more and more free spots for poor kids.

Stanford will respond that if they give away too many free educations, they'll go out of business.

Gov't will step in and mandate that all public colleges must give away a certain percentage of free college educations.

Tuition will sky-rocket on the few remaining people who are willing to pay.

2/20/2008 10:44:02 PM

Thank God Stanford isn't a public university.

2/20/2008 10:47:33 PM

I heard on NPR this evening that your chances of getting into stanford aren't that good either. So, good luck getting free tuition.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/april3/admission2006-43.html

2/20/2008 10:54:06 PM

Quote :

"About a third of the university's 6,700 undergraduates are expected to qualify for the tuition break. ""

so most of the undergraduates are rich kids

2/20/2008 10:58:19 PM

That's hardly a surprise. It's an incredibly selective university and money can buy you shit like... SAT prep classes, tutors, access to a good private HS, not needing a job in HS so you can focus on your studies, etc. Plus, the successful are often smart and pass on their smart genes to their kids.

If anything I'm surprised that many people qualify for it.

2/20/2008 11:11:12 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, Harvard's endowment topped the 35 billion dollar mark a this year. Thing is, not surprisingly I suppose, the Harvard endowment is earning something like 16-20% annually because it's managed by some of the best financial minds on the planet."

This is another thing I was hearing they were catching flack about. The ppl who manage such endowments are now top brass CEOs, and the financial rock star salaries on the financial sheets for the endowment has apparently been drawing some eyes. But yeah, there is obviously a reason they get paid so much...

2/20/2008 11:41:04 PM

umm, aren't they gonna have to gouge the kids from families making >$100k that much harder, now? that doesn't seem right. you can get school loans, you know.

giving people with less money a little break is one thing, but this seems kinda extreme.


^^^ having a household income of >$100k hardly makes you "rich".

[Edited on February 20, 2008 at 11:46 PM. Reason : asdfad]

2/20/2008 11:45:38 PM

Kudos to Stanford for doing this. With an institution of its size and caliber taking this step, it's going to force other competing institutions to respond.

Stanford isn't the first university to do something like this though. I know some schools like Cooper Union provide full tuition to all people who are admitted.

Like mathman points out, this is most likely more of a recruiting tool. While more kids are going to college, there is still very aggressive competition for the top tier of students. Universities are aggressively trying to recruit the best and the brightest and are fighting hard with not just traditional competitors but other emerging threats. You could say from an economic perspective that schools are trying to recruit the students who have the best prospects of becoming wealthy and/or prestigious as these individuals will either boost the brand of the university or bring in more endowment money down the road.

If you want to stretch a bit, they're boosting themselves now while the time is good so that later on, when this current surge in potential students dwindle, they'll be in the best position to pick up the best folks in a more limited pool.

They're responding to real market demands. In my opinion, it's free markets at work.

[Edited on February 21, 2008 at 12:00 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2008 12:00:19 AM