If tuition were free again at Rice?

Duncaroo
Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:04:22 +0000

Hmm… $0.75-1.00 billion. Endowment growth would help, no doubt, or even a fundraising campaign. The Centennial Campaign aims to raise $1 billion, and already has nearly $800 million of it. Granted, this is a special campaign and the biggest in Rice’s history, but I do think the university could pull off a similarly sized fundraiser again. Also, $1 billion is indeed a very significant sum, but it’s not out of reach for a group of interested mega-donors. So, I’d say achieving free tuition would be difficult but not terribly unrealistic if this were something the university, alumni, and friends came to believe would be beneficial.

One would think the added benefit would include making the school more attractive to the students in our applicant pool, thus improving our yield relative to our peers, allowing us to have an even more selective student body. If offering full-rides to everyone would help ensure that even more of the best students come to Rice, I think most would agree it’s worth it, especially in the long run. I just wasn’t sure it would have an opposite, undesired effect.

I was going to say that I included Emory as a peer school because Rice expressly considers all of the COFHE schools to be its peers, but then I checked and, oddly, Emory is not a member. Hmm… Emory IS a member of the AAU, though, so that should qualify it as a peer institution, right?