Joining a trend that reinforces the gap between the nation's wealthiest schools and those far short of multibillion-dollar endowments, Stanford University on Wednesday 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, that have taken steps in recent months to help middle-class families and, in some cases, households with incomes over $150,000.
Stanford will give free tuition to most undergraduates from families earning less than $100,000 a year.
Only about two dozen schools in the nation can afford to join the race to so dramatically boost financial aid, according to Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president with the American Council on Education. "Most private colleges and universities simply don't have those resources," he said.
More relevant to most American college students and their parents, Hartle stressed, are current state budget deficits that are expected to lead to fee increases at many public universities, including the UC and Cal State systems.
It may be cheaper next year, 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 UC Berkeley.
Experts say the newly enhanced aid at affluent private colleges may add even more public cachet to those campuses, some of which accept as little as 10% of their applicants. But they also stress that the schools are trying to keep up with one another, 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.)
"There is a large gap between the haves and so called have-nots," said Tony Pals, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities. Still, he and other experts said many schools with relatively modest endowments are trying to sweeten financial aid and to hold down costs with, for example, initiatives that encourage students to graduate in three years instead of four.
