Thursday, April 2, 2015

Stanford just made tuition free for families earning less than $125,000 per year

Wow - how about this?  Did you know that if you get accepted you might be able to go to Stanford for free?  That is if you make less than $125K per year!
Stanford University will provide free tuition to parents of students who earn less than $125,000 per year — and if they make less than $65,000, they won't have to contribute to room and board costs either.
Students are still expected to pay $5,000 toward college costs from summer earnings and working part-time while enrolled in college.
The announcement is an expansion of Stanford's old financial aid policy, which previously applied to students from families making less than $100,000 per year.
Most universities can't afford to offer such generous financial aid to their students. But they could draw a lesson from the plan's simplicity.
How Stanford's financial aid works
If a student's parents make less than $125,000 per year, and if they have assets of less than $300,000, excluding retirement accounts, the parents won't be expected to pay anything toward their children's Stanford tuition. Families with incomes lower than $65,000 won't have to contribute to room and board, either.
Students themselves will have to pay up to $5,000 each year from summer earnings, savings, and part-time work. There's no rule that parents can't cover their students' required contribution.
Stanford is much more generous toward middle-class and upper-middle class students than the federal government is. Most students who get subsidized loans and federal Pell Grants come from families making less than $60,000 per year. But it also enrolls an outsize proportion of wealthy students. In 2010, the university's director of financial aid said the median family income at Stanford was around $125,000.
On the other hand, only 14 percent of entering freshmen got federal Pell Grants in 2012, which typically go to students from families making less than $50,000 per year. Nationally, 41 percent of undergrads received Pell Grants.

Read the rest of the story here.

No comments: