Stanford Boosts Aid to Middle Class Students
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Joining a trend that reinforces the gap between the nation’s wealthiest schools and those far short of multibillion-dollar endowments, Stanford University on yesterday became the latest elite institution to announce a big boost in financial aid for undergraduates from the middle class.
Stanford is now among a small string of top-tier schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Pomona College in California, that have taken steps in recent months to help middle-class families and, in some cases, households with incomes of more than $150,000.
Stanford would give free tuition to most undergraduates from families earning less than $100,000 a year.
Only about two dozen schools in the United States can afford to join the race to boost financial aid so dramatically, according to a senior vice president with the American Council on Education, Terry Hartle. “Most private colleges and universities simply don’t have those resources,” he said.
More relevant to most American college students and their parents, Mr. Hartle stressed, are current state budget deficits that are expected to lead to fee hikes at many public universities, including the University of California and California State systems.
It might be cheaper next year, Mr. Hartle said, for a student with a family income of $150,000 to attend Harvard than to pay fees, room, board, and other expenses at the University of California, Berkeley.
Experts say that the newly enhanced aid at affluent private colleges might add even more public cachet to those campuses, some of which accept as few as 10% of their applicants. But they also stress that the schools are trying to keep up with each other, as well as fend off critics of their frequent tuition hikes.
The wealthiest universities are under congressional pressure to spend more of their huge endowments on scholarships. Harvard, the richest, had a $34.6 billion endowment as of June 30 and Stanford, ranked third after Yale, had $17.1 billion.
Stanford raised the most in donations last year, with $832 million, besting second place Harvard by $220 million, according to a new survey by the Council for Aid to Education.
