Administration sees little increase in need-based scholarships

Colleges & Universities Washington University in St. Louis
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<p>This Friday will know the new tuition cost for 2008/2009, and as U said before, merit scholarships are down from years before, and need base scholarship won’t increase despite higher costs.</p>

<p>From the Student Life campus newspaper:</p>

<p>“Despite a rise in Washington University’s endowment this year, the administration will not significantly increase the amount of money allocated for need-based scholarships. While the University’s endowment at the end of last fiscal year totaled $5.66 billion, only $500 million of that money was used for scholarships.”</p>

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<p>~9% endowment spending is quite commendable from where I sit, especially for scholarships. The general idea it to protect the corpus, and spend the income.</p>

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<p>To clarify, the statement that “only $500M…was used for scholarships” means that this portion of the total endowment was used as the basis for scholarship support. It does not mean that $500M of the endowment was actually spent for scholarships. Endowment spending for most universities ~4% of the principal/year. Therefore 4% of $500M= $20M spent on scholarships/year, an average of $3300/student.</p>