UW to poor students: You don’t owe us anything
UW President Mark Emmert announced it today during his Annual Address to the university. All students from poor homes (65% of average state income) will get a UDub education for free. Books, room, and beer extra. No word if this is just undergrad or will include grad students.
I was listening to the address over the Internet today when he made the announcement, and I just about fell out of my chair. Private schools have done similar things (e.g. Stanford did the same this year), but this is the first time I’ve heard of a public university doing it. If it works, it could transform this state’s educational system. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll be working somewhere else, I guess.
a very worthwhile endeavor, but I think this means that tuition for everyone else goes up up up.
I don’t think so, Josh…they did the same thing at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (my alma mater, already really really inexpensive) and it didn’t affect other people’s tuition.
The Carolina Initiative didn’t affect anyone else’s tuition costs at the University of North Carolina because the affected students’ tuition bills were paid for by a private fund within the University’s endowment, created specifically for this purpose. Modeled after the scholarship funds that athletic departments use to fund athletic scholarships, it doesn’t cost present students or the state’s taxpayers anything.
I imagine UW is using something along those lines, as well.
Yeah, there will be private funding — Bill Sr (Bill Gates II) is going to beat the bushes for private funding. And the University has an $800M+ endowment.
The total cost isn’t that much, though. Most of the money will come from pooling the Pell Grant money and the state scholarship funding. They’re saying the additional charges will be $1-2M a year to start. At a bare minimum 3% return, that’s $66.7M in additional endowment money. At 8%, it’s only $25M. And you figure people will go year to year, and the endowment will be tapped.
And it may actually slow tuition growth, since the endowment will be on the hook.