Friday, March 24, 2006

Delicious news about higher education funding

Yesterday the University of Pennsylvania made history by announcing that it would pay for tuition, room and board for all students from families with incomes of up to $50,000. By topping similar aid commitments from wealthier universities, Penn will hopefully set off competition among top tier colleges to put money where their mouths ought to be: providing higher education for a greater number of qualified students.

Said Gordon Winston, director of the Williams College Project on the Economics of Higher Education, “It is simply delicious. We have these enormously wealthy schools competing energetically for high ability, low-income students. They are out there slugging it out with each other to give equality of opportunity to a lot of students who richly deserve it.”

Hopefully other public and private institutions will follow suit.

Nathan Day Wilson

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