Middlebury College recently announced that beginning with the class of 2031 tuition for admitted students with family incomes up to $175,000 will be free. President Ian Baucom explains to WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley why the Ivy-league college is making the move.
IAN BAUCOM: We've been committed to financial aid support for our students and to being affordable for a really long time but we always know that we want to do more. We just completed a strategic planning process and our first priority in the plan we've produced is to invest in our people and our people begin with our students. So we really just wanted to think about what can we do to support amazing young people who might want to come to Middlebury and to try to make sure that talent and drive and curiosity for the world and not their financial means determine whether they can attend. So we wanted to reach out and open our doors a little bit more widely. And I think maybe the second thing is, I think we've been really good, like many of our peer institutions, in supporting our lowest income and lower income students for quite some time. Wanted to pay attention to middle income students and middle income families and be able to say to those students and their families too that here's a chance to come and have an extraordinary experience and not have to worry about the financial pressures.
BRADLEY: The college was initially considering targeting incomes of $150,000...
IAN BAUCOM: That’s right.
BRADLEY: ....and you went to $175,000 earlier than anticipated.
IAN BAUCOM: That’s right.
BRADLEY: Why? Why that income level?
IAN BAUCOM: We had known that we wanted to get to 175. We'd said let's go ahead and do what we can to get to 150 and then get to 175 as quickly as possible. And thanks to just some really generous donor support we were able to move more quickly. There's a little bit of science behind it as well. The 175 number is almost exactly double the median income for families around the U.S. and so that just felt like a good number for us to identify as a target for ourselves.
BRADLEY: What is the average current tuition for students?
IAN BAUCOM: Tuition is around 72 total cost of attendance, but then it's important to say, you know, it gets up into the 90s. We provide on average $66,000 in aid to our students and we provide financial aid to about 50% of our students currently.
BRADLEY: And this is only for tuition.
IAN BAUCOM: That’s right
BRADLEY: It doesn't change the costs for things like room and board and things like that.
IAN BAUCOM: That's right.
BRADLEY: Ian Baucom, does Middlebury College have a free tuition policy currently? Is this an adjustment?
IAN BAUCOM: We have effectively been tuition free, and it had been up to about the $135- 140 thousand threshold. That's kind of where we'd been.
BRADLEY: Do you know right now how many students this new free tuition level will impact?
IAN BAUCOM: We think about a third of our student body. Important to know we continue to provide financial aid above that number.
BRADLEY: So if you lose a third of the tuition that they would have paid without the tuition-free policy, how will Middlebury College absorb the costs from that lack of tuition revenue?
IAN BAUCOM: So one thing is we had already been providing a fair amount of it, so it's not going from zero to 175. We're very fortunate that we are a financially sound institution. We have a strong endowment and we we've seen strong endowment growth. And we just finished a fundraising campaign and had set as one of our central goals increased support for financial aid.
BRADLEY: Why not just reduce costs?
IAN BAUCOM: Oh, we are reducing costs also. One of the reasons why we're in a position to be able to do this is that over the last couple of years we have gone through complex and difficult measures of reducing the costs.
BRADLEY: President Baucom, free tuition for admitted students, these types of policies are popping up at colleges all over the country.
IAN BAUCOM: Yeah.
BRADLEY: Why is this happening?
IAN BAUCOM: I think a lot of it is about really trying to think about middle-income families. I was actually just on a panel with Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth, and Dartmouth has a similar plan. A lot of institutions that began this work focused on lowest-income students are really trying to pay attention now to the middle-income that often gets squeezed and I think that's what you're seeing. I feel lucky, honestly, to be part of something where more of those incredible young people can say, "Hey, I can go pursue my dream."
