<p>FWIW, All of the UCs and CAL States have Free Tuition for in-state, and it hasnt had much effect there. The colleges are not really different than any other school.</p>
<p>Also those % of students receiving aid present a distorted picture. My D qualified for no Aid beyond an unsubsidized stafford loan. Since unsubsidized stafford loans are guaranteed by the federal government that counts as aid, even though it has no monitary value.</p>
<p>My bad. MIT is not “free” to poor students. All but the poorest students have to come up with $5,500 a year out of $40,000+ in low interest loans and work-study. I stand corrected.</p>
<p>If the concern is that taking out low-interest loans and work study is overly burdensome for poor students, wouldn’t it make more sense for MIT (or a donor) to use addition funds to eliminate that $5,500 “burden” for low income students rather than giving the Gulfstream crowd a $42,000 discount?</p>
<p>There are people at MIT who can non only comfortably pay the price, but who are tickled pink to do so, getting at least double the value in return. Why the rush to say, “That’s OK, put your wallet back. Your money’s no good here, it’s on the house!” Where would be the logic in that? Somebody call the MIT Economics department for a consultation.</p>
<p>PS: Olin is a bad example. As a start-up, they would be unable to attract high-stat students without a gimmick. If nobody is going to pay you for decades until you establish a repuation, you might as well call it “free” and build your marketing plan around that.</p>
<p>“My bad. MIT is not “free” to poor students. All but the poorest students have to come up with $5,500 a year out of $40,000+ in low interest loans and work-study. I stand corrected.”</p>
<p>Interestedad, I think that all students have to come up with $5,500 plus their EFC plus their insurance costs. In the EFC, the student contribution comprises the summer earning expectation discussed above. The only students who do not have the summer earning expecations are foreign students. In other words, a US student with a FAFSA EFC of zero will have at a minimum of $1,500 as the MIT CA EFC. I also believe that outside scholarships cannot decrease this EFC and that MIT uses this formula: </p>
<p>Cost of Attendance (no insurance costs included)</p>
<h2>- Expected Family Contribution (that has a minimum of 1500 for US students)</h2>
<p>Financial Need</p>
<p>$5,500
<h2>- Total of Outside Scholarships</h2>
<p>Self Help Amount</p>
<p>Financial Need</p>
<h2>- Self Help Amount</h2>
<p>Total Grants and Scholarships (MIT, Federal, State)</p>
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<p>Yes, but that data is available from the Common Data Set filings or USNEWS online.</p>
<p>For MIT in 2004-05:</p>
<p>64% of the students qualified for need-based aid.</p>
<p>61% of the students received a need-based grant or scholarship. The average of those grants was $24,244.</p>
<p>55% of the students were required to make a “self-help” contribution (loans and workstudy) on top of that grant amount. The average self-help portion was $4,524.</p>
<p>Of that self-help portion, the average loan component was $3,897.</p>
<p>Now, I agree that the self-help portion at MIT is slightly higher than at a very few other high-end schools, but that is offset by the fact that MIT’s percentage of need-based aid students is also very high.</p>
<p>If the goal is to eliminate self-help contributions for low-income students, there are much more direct, efficient ways to accomplish that goal than to eliminate tuition and fees for the entire student body, including a signficiant number who can comfortably and happily write the tuition checks.</p>
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<p>First of all, I’ve seen no evidence introduced that the “Gulfstream crowd” even WANTS to go to MIT. I suspect the Gulfstream crowd would be happier at some other prestigiuous that gave them more free time for jetting off on weekends, or whatever!</p>
<p>Second, “tuition-free” doesn’t mean giving everyone a $42,000 discount. It means free tuition for all, but there are still living expenses, books, and incidentals. </p>
<p>Tuition-free means that a middle-class or upper-middle class student can dream about MIT without asking his or her parents for significantly more than they’d likely pay for the sticker price at the local state university.</p>
<p>Tuition-free means that a student from a family like EvilRobot’s can have the same peace of mind about not burdening his family that ER does at Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Tuition-free means that a student with a middle-class or upper-middle-class family safety net can actually become an approximately independent and autonomous adult at age 18 while attending MIT, because it is realistically possible for many such students to cover most of their remaining costs with loans, jobs, outside scholarships, scrounging around, savings, etc.</p>
<p>It means that a student whose dream educational/career path is seriously different from his/her parents’ vision is able to pursue that path at MIT.</p>
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<p>You’ve got a point there. </p>
<p>But to be fair to Olin, it has a very innovative curriculum, one that is attractive enough that it could be marketed in itself. Of course, as you observed, the free status makes it more attractive, gives it great press, and encourages bright students to give a startup a chance. I would hate, however, for readers not familiar with it to think that free tuition was Olin’s only “gimmick.”</p>
<p>I was going to write about how Olin isn’t a gimmick, but I’m too tired right now to do the subject justice. Instead, I give the Founding Precepts (in two parts). If you want to understand Olin they’re worth reading.</p>
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<p>Continued from previous post…</p>
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<p>“It means that a student whose dream educational/career path is seriously different from his/her parents’ vision is able to pursue that path at MIT.”</p>
<p>They can do that just as well or better at Cooper Union, so what’s the point? The angst of a couple of well-heeled applicants (a dime a dozen) who have teenage difficulties in dealing with their parents (and who have other good alternatives) against providing additional subsidies to those whose parents would love to have them attend, but just can’t afford it? Sounds like no contest to me.</p>
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<p>Marketed effectively if there is sufficient prestige (selectivity) associated with the college. As a start-up, a key component of Olin’s strategy has to be finding a way to bypass the decades it takes to develop prestige and attract high-stat customers. Building their marketing plan around tuition-free enrollment for the first decade or so is a very saavy strategy. It’s the ultimate extension of the merit discounting strategy in widespread use across the country to boost the median SATs (and hence “prestige”) of a school.</p>
<p>This is, in no way, a negative comment about Olin. It’s simply the reality of the marketplace. The no-price strategy has given them a degree of “instant” prestige that allows them to siphon off a few students here and there from MIT, CalTech, and so on and so forth.</p>
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<p>MIT cares about its OWN students being autonomous, independent, empowered adults, with their parents staying out of the way as much as possible, as near as I can make out.</p>
<p>There are lots of alternative places and paths (aside from Cooper Union) where a potential MIT student would have the freedom to set a course without parental interference (go to a service academy, go to a low-cost commuter college part-time and work fulltime, take a merit fullride at a school a tier or two below MIT, become an autodidact using MIT’s Open Courseware, etc.)</p>
<p>But MIT is presumably interested in a diverse community of autonomous, independent, self-realizing and engaged students working together and contributing to one another’s learning at MIT itself.</p>
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<p>Their charter specifies that it is a longterm goal to keep tuition zero forever. (They do have a fallback feature, in case of exigency, that allows them to raise tuition to the average level of average in-state tuition charged by the top public institutions in the country, but it sounds like this is not a design, just an escape hatch. After all, who knows what sort of very expensive learning technolgy might be required at engineering schools at some point down the road?)</p>
<p>But, from the charter terms posted by beck87, it doesn’t at all sound to me like the free tuition strategy is designed to be a short-term thing–it sounds like it’s part of Olin’s permanent design and vision.</p>
<p>Yes. It does appear that the charter intends to make permanent the highest expression of merit-aid discounting – a pricing structure that is inherently regressive in that it reduces the cost for wealthy customers relative to a need-based pricing structure that reduces the cost for those who can least afford tuition.</p>
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<p>By your same logic, the “pricing structure” of free public libraries is regressive compared to an alternative model of a library that would charge rental fees to wealthy patrons and provide discounts and free loans of library material only to the poorer patrons.</p>
<p>(The primary source of funding for new book purchases at our library, by the way, is private donations and fundraising by the Friends of the Library, not general tax revenues.)</p>
<p>Olin’s free tuition is indeed intended as a part of the long-term vision. But the small class size (75 students per year), the innovative and highly selective admissions process, and the remarkable intensity and excitement and energy in the classes and on campus are a strong draw to high-performing students interested in engineering… once they HEAR about the school, that is! It was a rather cool plus that they covered full tuition, but it was the school, the integrated curriculum approach, and THE PEOPLE which made it a top choice for my son. Along with the uniqueness of being able to attend a school where he could help shape the course of its growth and evolution.</p>
<p>He was accepted last year at both MIT and Olin. After a very difficult visit-and-consider process, he decided that he could not be 100% certain he wanted to pursue “engineering” for the next four years, and reluctantly declined Olin’s offer to attend MIT. Where we are paying full freight with not a penny of aid or scholarship award. I’m not sure that this proves anything, but we’re not a “Gulfstream” family, and we’ll endure, thanks.</p>
<p>My daughter is an Olin student. The scholarship was definitely a consideration, but not the central one. The opportunity to learn in a new engineering program, and the people at Olin were the central consideration. Rank, prestige, USNWR numbers. . . .Olin is a great opportunity to be with people who are not obsessed with such things.</p>
<p>Wisteria:</p>
<p>I am not making a value judgement on regressive versus progressive pricing structures for private colleges. I am just presenting the reality. </p>
<p>For “x” amount of financial aid discounts, a “free-tuition” college will give a higher percentage of its discount dollars to wealthier students than a college that concentrates its aid based on need. </p>
<p>I think it’s important to understand that reality before we award “Mother Theresa” prizes to colleges that opt for the “free tuition” pricing strategy.</p>
<p>The exception is Berea because they simply don’t accept wealthier students as an integral part of their mission. </p>
<p>If I were running Olin, I would probably go exactly the same route – attract higher income high-SAT customers with a “free tuition” promotion. It’s brilliant. Think about it. We’ve already seen one parent here whose child seriously considered Olin over an acceptance at MIT. That is VERY effective marketing.</p>
<p>Olin is also a unique and VERY attractive school, with or without free tuition. And I know of more than one current Olin student who turned down MIT.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure who you thought was awarding a “Mother Theresa” prize to colleges opting for free tuition pricing.</p>
<p>I do think that offering free tuition at a highly selective college can increase its pull in attracting a critical mass of extremely strong and motivated students–and it’s not clear to me that “higher income high-SAT” students is what either Olin or MIT is looking to attract, PER SE.</p>
<p>I think both schools are looking to attract extremely passionate, motivated, self-starting, high-energy, resilient and resourceful students with great problem-solving skills who will be excellent team-players and collaborative learners. (Such students often have very high SATs, but not always, which is why schools like MIT turn down many students with very high scores.)</p>
<p>They have zero interest in admitting a kid who is going to stay in his/her room all alone and study all the time by themselves, no matter how high his or her SAT scores or family wealth. (Such kids might as well stay home and study independently using MIT’s Open Courseware!)</p>
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<p>It takes more than “free tuition” to attract many such students. Caltech’s Axline merit scholarship, which offers a full free ride to 15 students a year and full tuition to 15 more students a year gets about a 20% yield, lower than their overall yield of 43%.</p>
<p>There is a certain “magic” in creating an attractive collaborative learning culture among kindred spirits, with the right balance of stress and joy, cooperation and challenge.</p>
<p>From what I can tell, MIT has gotten it “more right” for more students than Caltech. (There is, of course, a small but select group for whom Caletch is exactly the right place, but by and large, MIT seems to project a more joyful image to the world, which is perhaps why MIT’s yield is so much higher than Caltech’s, especially on common admits.)</p>
<p>My impression of Olin is that it has borrowed heavily from the best of MIT’s balance of joy and stress collaborative and spirited culture. </p>
<p>Free tuition is a great marketing tool, but it’s not enough in and of itself. You also have to have a fundamentally great product concept to draw the kind of students both Olin and MIT seem to want.</p>
<p>Olin, by the way, has no real incentive to attract “rich” students, given their free tuition structure. Moderate income families are just as capable of covering Olin’s modest charges for room & board as rich families. And poor students qualify for Pell and SEOG grants that can cover most of those costs as well. </p>
<p>So Olin’s revenues collected from students are pretty independent of the wealth of the students they attract.</p>
<p>On the other hand, future corporate and foundation donations to Olin (over and above the initial bequest) might well be higher to the extent they attract families from low and modest incomes.</p>
<p>By the same token, if a generous donor endowed MIT with enough money to make it tuition-free, MIT would have no particular interest in attracting rich students–they’d do quite well with students from low and moderate income families.</p>
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<p>Ahhh, but are they just as capable of producing the same median SAT scores? Don’t overlook the fact that SAT scores and family income are inextricably correlated. That is why, even a tuiton-free school benefits from attracting a well-heeled customer base. Actually, that’s a key motivation behind the tuition-free, ultimate merit aid, strategy in the first place. If the motivation were simply to provide free education to people who couldn’t afford it, just go with a policy of 100% grants to everyone making less than $50,000 or $100,000 or whatever a year.</p>