Cutting tuition opens doors

Last week, Brown University made the decision to eliminate tuition for all applicants who come from families with an income of $60,000 dollars a year or less. In addition, the school will replace student loans with grants as financial aid for all students whose parents make less than $100,000 a year.\nThese moves come after several other Ivy League schools have taken similar actions in attempts to make it easier for lower-income students to have the opportunity to attend.\nThe Ivy League is, of course, made up of private schools. And since the nation’s public school system is, in theory, supposed to be designed to educate everyone who wants an education, it seems like the public schools should be the ones cutting tuition or taking other action to reduce costs. Of course, this is easier said than done. Sometimes donors say they will only give to a university under the condition that the money be used for a specific purpose. We’ve heard of this before – “I’ll give you $10 million to renovate the Joe E. Schmoe Indigenous Whale Reservation and Research Center. Oh, you don’t want to build that? Well, in that case my money will stay in this little golden vault until you change your mind ... it’ll be waiting for you.”\nCutting tuition and replacing student loans with grants may turn out to be less profitable in the long run, but we say this is a good move on the part of Brown. Obviously tuition costs a lot, so that is a big chunk of change that the school will be missing out on. However, the school is not poor. Brown has a quite substantial endowment which can help to alleviate the burden for students from lower-income families hoping to get a Brown education.\nAlso, if the students helped by this policy end up becoming wealthy and give back to their alma mater, that endowment could grow substantially larger. \nObviously, as a public school, IU does not have nearly the money on its own to cover a program exactly like this. But it seems that if private schools can make this solid effort, the public school system should follow suit. And it’s not like IU doesn’t have money coming in from endowments. The Associated Press reported just a few days ago that IU is in the top 20 nationwide in terms of private grants and donations. Also, the school is in part funded by the state – why can’t funds be increased to support more programs for students in need? Education is not a superfluous expenditure, and it shouldn’t be valued by a dollar sign. Our goal in America is to make education accessible to everyone, and in today’s age, a college degree has replaced the high school diploma as a necessary foundation for a successful career. Places of higher education should be searching for ways – like Brown has – to make college attainable for everyone who wants it.