When the University of Chicago announced this month that students whose families earn less than $250,000 will no longer pay tuition starting next year, they were taking a big gamble.
The prestigious university recently was hit with a credit downgrade, is saddled with debt tied to building campaigns, and has laid off staff.
Given these challenges, this decision seems risky. And yet the University of Chicago’s strategic move recognizes something undeniable — a college education, especially at a premier school, is out of reach for middle-class American families.
One year at the university costs nearly $100,000, including tuition, food, housing and other student fees.
That’s an entire year’s salary, or more.
Yes, the college tuition game has become a lot like buying a car — almost nobody pays the full sticker price. But there’s a lot of wiggle room for universities to determine what individual families can afford to pay, meaning the all-in cost can remain uncomfortably high even after the financial aid office weighs in. And such a steep price tag is enough to knock a school off the list in the first place for families that aren’t wealthy.
To that end, we applaud the university's decision, which will go a long way to ensuring affordability for many smart kids and their families. It’ll also promote economic diversity on campus, a good thing for the health of the school. The alternative is a campus increasingly dominated by children of the affluent.
Other elite schools have taken the same route. Yale in January announced free tuition for families earning less than $200,000 for the coming academic year. Harvard did the same last March.
These are the university's competitors, making college affordability for middle-income families table stakes in the competition for elite students. And they’re doing it with an endowment of about $11 billion, versus Yale’s $44 billion and Harvard’s $57 billion.
At some point, Northwestern will have to respond.
Source: Korea Times News
