Parents with annual family incomes below $125,000 will pay no tuition

This is nothing new. This happens at every top 20 <i>private</i> college&#x2F;university respectively. I went to Haverford College [1] and paid nothing on tuition. Divorced parents and 10 siblings... That&#x27;ll do it. A friend from high school went to Duke free too for similar reasons. And another friend went to Penn for free because of her parents&#x27; state too.<p>The only sad thing is how few people know about this. Under-privileged students think they can only afford state schools. In truth, I couldn&#x27;t even afford a state school. Only a private college&#x2F;university would give me the full financial aid that I needed to attend.<p>Thankfully programs like Questbridge[2] (it&#x27;s not spam, surprisingly) help facilitate under-priveleged students applying to and attending top private schools.<p>[1] - <a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/haverford-college-3274" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com&#x2F;best-colleges&#x2F;...</a><p>[2] - <a href="http://www.questbridge.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.questbridge.org&#x2F;</a>

Essentially, colleges (and the government) expecting a family contribution to tuition meant I went into extensive debt on my own, though cosigned by my stepdad (who made it clear he would in no way take on any of the financial obligation of the loans) for college. Most of my friends&#x27; parents were the same way, and did not contribute to their children&#x27;s college (and I&#x27;m not sure where all these kids whose parents are paying for their college are even going, really... or what kind of money those parents must be making to be able to pay outright for college tuition) -- at a top tier U.S. school. In an engineering program.<p>Working at a thrift store full time making minimum wage and going to engineering school full time for the first two years, then doing tech support full time and going to engineering school full time for the last two years was no joke, and I still have debt remaining, two years out of school with a good job.<p>Why should it be the <i>parents&#x27;</i> income that anyone cares about?<p>Students are expected to contribute? Don&#x27;t make me laugh. It&#x27;s their education, they are of majority age, they likely will be paying for it and then some. How are PARENTS expected to contribute at all? Mine honestly did not and do not make enough money to have any left over after taking care of my two younger siblings (ten years younger), and yet on the FAFSA right there, an &quot;expected family contribution&quot;.<p>Edit: they do, of course, make enough money combined that the government expects that they&#x27;d want to send their kid to college and could theoretically contribute something to it. They did what they could, but that wasn&#x27;t what fulfilled expectations laid down by the Powers That Be.

The whole system of need-based financial aid seems to be effectively moving tuition towards perfectly elastic pricing based on how much students <i>can</i> pay.<p>Universities raise the price of tuition, then increase financial aid for the subset of students who can&#x27;t pay the increase. Incremental revenue for the university still goes up as they get more revenue from anyone who can reasonably afford the increased &quot;base tuition&quot; amount.

I am always conflicted about these. I was fortunate enough to get a full ride (all grants, no loans) to a top University, even as an international student. My parents couldn&#x27;t afford to pay for my flight here, which the University did. In a way that has allowed me to take a riskier career trajectory by quitting a 6 figure starting salary at a top tech company after graduation within 3 months and starting a startup. So I am ever so grateful for policies like this.<p>But I wonder if universities should offer some sort of deferred payment (5 years after graduation for instance) to students instead (not a 3rd party loan). If you go to Stanford you are pretty much guaranteed a stable income when you graduate. Yes ,granted, a lot of alumni do donate without feeling the necessity to do so, but having such an option will help universities, perhaps more for those with smaller endowments &quot;recover&quot; some of the cost.<p>Universities could always make exceptions some time down the line on a case by case basis, depending on student&#x27;s current income which will vary violently even for top universities, with some students deciding to work for a non-profit while others choosing a more lucrative job, just like income tax works.<p>Again, I am really not sure, just throwing it out there.

I dropped out of MIT both to do a startup overseas (ITAR) and because my parents wouldn&#x27;t contribute any of the &quot;expected family contribution&quot; and I couldn&#x27;t get enough loans on my own.<p>Rather than all the crazy games, I&#x27;d prefer if education were genuinely market priced, or if individuals could take reasonable debt loads or sign indenture agreements. A commercial organization should be allowed to do something like ROTC; paying an undergrad full college costs in exchange for a guaranteed employee for 2-4y post graduation at market rate.

This is, of course, good news for many families of current and&#x2F;future Stanford students. That being said, the upper middle class continues to get screwed in this country. UMC produces most of the GNP, and pays most of the taxes (sorry no carried interest tax loopholes available to those who draw salaries), and then we still have to pay these crazy tuition fees.<p>The oligarchs, of course, don&#x27;t care who much college costs be it 0$K, $100K or $200K year. Any at cost basis, it just doesn&#x27;t make a dent in their wallet.<p>Down with the oligarchs!

I went to Stanford as an undergrad just a few years after this bidding war between top universities began. The additional financial aid I received saved my family and me more than $100k -- that figure would be much higher if we factor in the interest on the loans I didn&#x27;t have to take -- and I will be forever grateful. I applaud Stanford for expanding this program.<p>But I&#x27;m also a little sad about the way this is playing out, because the net effect is to set the top private universities even further apart from the many great universities that nonetheless can&#x27;t afford policies like this. There&#x27;s already so much pressure on a lot of kids to get into a top private university, and now many of them are in a position where if they don&#x27;t get into one of the top four, their only option is a public school. (And yes, there exist public schools, such as Cal, which one can argue deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as H&#x2F;P&#x2F;Y&#x2F;S, but certainly there isn&#x27;t a UC Berkeley in every state, and going to a public school out of state can be as expensive as going to a private school.)<p>If you really want to be sad, take a look at how short is the list of schools with need-blind admission that claim to meet all demonstrated need:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Need-blind_admission#U.S._institutions_that_are_need-blind_for_U.S._applicants_and_meet_full_demonstrated_need" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Need-blind_admission#U.S._insti...</a><p>This is a supremely low bar, because schools get to define how much you need; there&#x27;s no standard for this. And of course schools can meet your need with loans. But even still, the schools on this list are the only ones in the country which even claim to be meritocratic in their admission of US applicants.

I fundamentally disagree with this, and its implementation seems to be a significant attack on dual income, middle class families who are doing well for themselves.<p>This doesn&#x27;t hit the rich, it hits the middle earner and it hits them extremely hard. It&#x27;s frankly pathetic but I suppose what can you expect in an era of hard pressed populist socialism.

One wonders about the people who make $125,001 - $170,000 who are then on the hook for the full tuition (around $45K). They&#x27;d find it cost effective to substantially lower their income.

Man I wish this had been in place in the 90&#x27;s when I went to Stanford. I grew up lower middle class in the Central Valley. My parents did everything they could to help, but that didn&#x27;t make a dent of course. Stanford was fairly generous with outright grant money, but I still graduated with enough debt that it really handicapped my wife and I in our early adulthood years, and that was after taking 2 years off to work full time to help save money for tuition.<p>Still, I can&#x27;t complain. I wouldn&#x27;t trade my Stanford experience for anything. And for what it&#x27;s worth, it would have actually cost me more to go to Berkeley as the aid package there wasn&#x27;t nearly as generous.

Hate to bash Stanford, but as a current master&#x27;s student in CS, I&#x27;ve found their financial aid to be horrendous. The only real options are RAships and TAships. I don&#x27;t consider these to be &quot;aid packages&quot; because they entail a tremendous amount of work. My current employer matched what was going to be offered by the TAship with less hours overall.<p>EDIT: Just for kicks, here are some emails here that demonstrate the reality of Stanford financial aid at the master&#x27;s level.<p>Last quarter:<p>Nov. 17th: Hold on registration due to account balance... Nov. 18th: This is a friendly reminder that you have unpaid charges on your account... [PAYS $10,000 of tuition]<p>This quarter:<p>Feb. 16th: Your Stanford student account has been placed on hold* due to an outstanding balance... Feb. 17th: This is a friendly reminder that you have unpaid charges on your account... Mar. 18th: Student Account Notice... Today: We are sorry to inform you that you are not currently eligible to participate in the StanfordCardPlan...due to financial hold. [PAYS $5,000 of tuition]<p>This cycle has gone on for the past year now. For some context, I take two classes per quarter and live on-campus (on-campus housing is the cheapest you can get in Palo Alto). My total tuition + housing is $15,562 per quarter.

My family was making about $150k&#x2F;yr when I was in school. We didn&#x27;t get any assistance.<p>It&#x27;s great that children from lower income families are getting subsidized, but with these kinds of policies there&#x27;s always a hard cutoff point, and the people just above that cutoff point are the ones who get screwed.<p>Money shouldn&#x27;t be in education period. If whether or not you can study is even partly determined by the finances of your parents, then the system is wrong.

I don&#x27;t want be a troll, but I am struck by something. I think this may be the first TB thread I&#x27;ve seen, about college education, where there isn&#x27;t a strong sentiment (approaching 50%) questioning the value of college education at all, dismissing it as &quot;signaling,&quot; and demanding &quot;disruption&quot; of the entire higher education system.<p>Is Stanford that powerful of a brand?

What I find even more important:<p>&gt; In either case, students will still be expected to contribute toward their own educational expenses from summer income, savings and part-time work during the school year. Students are expected to contribute at least $5,000 per year from these sources but are not expected to borrow to make the contribution.

The financial aid site clarifies the definition of typical assets. Seems like families with under $300K qualify, excluding retirement accounts and primary residence home equity beyond 1.2 times annual income. As others have mentioned, it&#x27;s designed to prevent families who have large savings from manufacturing an artificially low income (an extreme case is retiring early for a few years to show no income).<p>The takeaway is, maxing out retirement accounts like a 401k and dumping savings into paying off the primary residence mortgage are ways to accumulate net worth without accumulating &quot;above-typical&quot; assets.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;financialaid.stanford.edu&#x2F;site&#x2F;faq&#x2F;index.html#faq_20" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;financialaid.stanford.edu&#x2F;site&#x2F;faq&#x2F;index.html#faq_20</a> ===========<p>What do you mean by &quot;typical assets&quot;?<p>For applicants who report total annual parent income up to $125,000, we generally consider &quot;typical assets&quot; to be an adjusted total net worth of less than $300,000. Adjusted total net worth usually reflects the sum of the following amounts:<p>Cash, savings, checking Investments Home equity, capped at 1.2 times annual income Equity in real estate other than the home Business net worth<p>We do not include formal retirement assets (401k, 403b, IRA, Keogh) in our analysis.

This is interesting, I wonder what does it mean for international students? $125K in family income for students from developing countries, will probably cover most of the students.

Boy, wanna talk about perverse incentives? How about this &quot;typical assets&quot; business? One more way today&#x27;s world proves you&#x27;re a sucker to be frugal and save. Stanford is indeed a luxury, and there&#x27;s no reason a well-off family should not pay for it. But these free rides are not coming only from endowments. If you&#x27;re paying full freight, you&#x27;re not covering just your kid but a couple other kids too. This is a mad way to price products. Only maybe healthcare is less rational.

Why use a fixed value and not a sliding % scale?<p>What about the family that makes 126,000 who pays tuition and is now in a much worse position that a 124,000 family.

Every time I see this, I get a little sick thinking about the ~$100k in loans I accumulated getting a BA at University of Chicago and Wash U in St. Louis (I transferred). I got some merit scholarships and a good amount of grant aid, but policies like this starting going into effect not long after I graduated. Based on the current policies at Wash U, I would have paid nothing :&#x2F;

Rice University (originally Rice Institute) began teaching in 1912 and didn&#x27;t charge tuition until 1965, as they were also amending their charter to admit other than white students. My understanding is that Rice still provides a relatively large amount of student aid compared to most elite universities.

Can any one explain what &#x27;...and typical assets means&#x27;? I took it to mean the value of normal things you own such as a house and cars. This seems like a massive caveat against the headline (basically anyone who owns their home), but since it&#x27;s being ignored, I assume I&#x27;m wrong.

Instead of straight income, would a better method look at AGI, or account for cost of living in some way? Colleges doing this would be a boon for people in small towns like mine, but would offer smaller advantage to those living in high expense cities.

This is a great step. I wonder if there are any plans to expand this to would-be adult learners. That would be amazing. If other top universities follow suit (I&#x27;d love to see this at NYU and Columbia, personally), that&#x27;d be even better. Not going to solve the student loan crisis, but it&#x27;ll certainly help a bit. Encouraging to see this.<p>Another thing I like about this is the &quot;only contribute $5000 a year&quot; part (especially if it does expand to adults) - that means if you&#x27;ve built a small personal safety net, you won&#x27;t have to watch it all go up in smoke instantly. That adds a margin of safety you don&#x27;t get right now.

My girlfriend works in the US education system (in an other state), and there seem to be a trend were the marketing power of those schools is good enough to attract rich kids from foreign countries paying full tuition, so that on the US side they could maintain appearances of some equality (without touching their budget, it&#x27;s not on the table).<p>Of course, one of the problems is that the selection based on money is very different from selection based on school grades, and the whole sport story is set to play again with Saudi students.

I&#x27;m conflicted,<p>on one hand this is good in that they are recognizing that debt burdens are a real hinderence to their graduates<p>on the other hand, this is used to pitch the line that 65K tuition is no big deal<p>which you&#x27;re in line for at the full rate at combined 225K income<p>look, I get that in modern internet culture, no sypathy is supposed to be shown to people with household income over 200K, but that is still really alot<p>its also not at all obvious that the return on any investment of 200K for education is worthwhile<p>I&#x27;ll just link to: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nber.org&#x2F;papers&#x2F;w17159" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nber.org&#x2F;papers&#x2F;w17159</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;education.." rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;education...</a>.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;education.." rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;research&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;education...</a>.<p>for the general case against<p>also even if it does pay off, you have to work like a dog to make it pay off, its not a passive investment<p>if you&#x27;re buying a website on flippa, the degree to which your investment is passive or active factors pretty heavily into the price,<p>it should be the same for colleges<p>(I&#x27;d also love to see a breakdown of exactly how much of Stanfords admitted class comes form &lt; 125K parent income, between 125K and 225K parent income, and &gt; 225K parent income)<p>--------------------------------------------------------<p>also, I have a problem with the meme that elite colleges are now cheaper than state colleges<p>I get that merit scholarship vary by college, but students qualified enough to get into Stanford or Harvard will almost certainly qualify for full merit scholarships at most if not all state schools<p>(maybe not at Cal or UCLA, but almost certainly at UCSB or UCD or San Jose State or Fresno State)<p>that meme should stop

Honest question: Lets take a hypothetical worst case scenario. You are admitted to a top school. However, your parents make well over $125k but are for some reason unwilling to provide any contribution. You are responsible for full payments.<p>Is there no bank that will let you take out these loans? isn&#x27;t it possible to take out a combination of federal and private loans to cover the cost?<p>Disclaimer: I was fortunate enough to go to a top university and pay nothing for tuition and housing.

My son goes to UNC Chapel Hill. He was his high school&#x27;s valedictorian and had excellent SAT&#x27;s. He won an academic scholarship (The Johnston) that has a needs based criteria as well. My wife (she&#x27;s disabled and receives Social Security Disability) earn less than $100K. Based on our income, our son&#x27;s scholarship is whittled down to all of $1000.00 per semester. I&#x27;m paying nearly $9,000.00 per semester so he can graduate with no loans.

<p><pre><code> 7,018 undergraduates [1] 9,118 graduates [1] 2,118 faculty [1] 2,872 clerical [2] </code></pre> It appears that Stanford has a very competitive student to bureaucrat ratio. I would think twice before handing them $60k&#x2F;yr.<p>[1] <a href="http://facts.stanford.edu/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;facts.stanford.edu&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;facts.stanford.edu&#x2F;administration&#x2F;</a>

I didn&#x27;t get to go to Stanford.<p>So, when I got my rejection letter, I replied with &quot;I reject this rejection&quot; like in the Snopes story.<p>Then went to talk to the admissions folks, who thought that I had literally hopped on a plane and flew half the planet just to make good on a joke (I was already in the US for work actually).<p>Ended up working with a Stanford prof for a semester, after which I decided I was done with academia.

It would seem to me that using a single cutoff like this versus a continuous graded scale incentivizes people just above the cutoff to lie about their income.<p>Even if the expected contribution for a family with $130k is very small, it would be tempting to fudge the number and put that tuition money towards other expenses.

What does &#x27;typical assets&#x27; mean? Parents that haven&#x27;t saved for retirement?

With &quot;typical assets&quot; -- my family was below the income thereshold but didn&#x27;t receive any aid from Stanford in &#x27;06 because our family farm was worth quite a bit. Lots of ways to slip through the cracks with these policies...

but you still need a high family income to send the kid to a school (private) where there will be a teacher who will have the connections with ivy league schools so they can write a letter of recommendation that will be read and not summarily discarded<p>at my (private) school the ONLY way to get into an ivy league (no matter how high your grades were) was to get a letter from the teacher with the connection to Harvard ... or the (other) teacher with the connection to Stanford ... or the (other) teacher with the connection to Yale<p>students even decided early on which courses to take so that they would have exposure to these teachers early on

Why not just make it a graduated tuition based on parental income?

As an Indian junior, this makes me even sadder. Especially considering that there are like 7 schools in the US that are need-blind for overseas applicants. :&#x2F;

Although it isn&#x27;t anything new, it&#x27;s v good to still work with this idea, coz education shouldn&#x27;t be limited by money...

Is this applicable for foreign students. If it is, a lot of Indian wouldn&#x27;t have to take big loans for doing their masters.

I wonder what chances you have to get into Ivy League in the first place if your parents earn less then 125k.

Not having this is why I went to Cal.

how will this make any difference? if you&#x27;re a non urm who doesn&#x27;t already know that top colleges provide very generous financial aid, it&#x27;s highly unlikely that you will have developed the right all round profile to get a place at stanford.

Why is this even news?? This happens at pretty much every top tier private&#x2F;public university. Colleges price discriminate between people of different incomes. The true cost per student is not 50k at a private school, it&#x27;s probably more like 30k, and people pay between 0 and 50k depending on their income.

Looks like Standford is learned something :-) Not everyone that can afford to pay is smarter then the one who can&#x27;t. Students should be accepted upon knowledge and skills and not there financial situation. I vote for free education!

This is what a step in the right direction looks like, folks.

Now at least we have know the real threshold of poverty.

seems a little silly to support low income students like this yet continue with class biased &quot;holistic&quot; admissions

cool. But is access limited by money to pay, or by a system that can favor kids from fancy schools&#x2F;backgrounds?

well i wasn&#x27;t smart enough to get into standford and i already paid my student loans so...

Well, when the whole world found out how easy it was to cheat at Stanford this morning - they just said fuck it and made it free.<p>source: <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_27799963/stanford-university-reports-allegations-cheating-by-students" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mercurynews.com&#x2F;health&#x2F;ci_27799963&#x2F;stanford-unive...</a>

What happens for a family making $125,001? Are they expected to pay full tuition? I applaud the initiative in any event.

This is a good start. Just my opinion, but I think Harvard should be considered a for-profit company unless all students go free.