A free Princeton

How can the world's best undergraduate university get even better? By abolishing tuition for all of its students. Surprisingly, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.

As Daniel Rauch '10 has written about extensively elsewhere, Princeton is ridiculously rich. Our endowment is over $13 billion, and, at our average rate of return, we can expect to add another $2 billion in 2007. Meanwhile, revenue from undergraduate tuition amounts to about $150 million.

So what's the problem? Why does University Vice President Bob Durkee '69 say that 22 percent of the University's operating budget is from student fees, and that "removing those dollars from the budget would very significantly reduce the quality of the education we can offer our students?"

He's not telling the whole story. What he chose not to mention is that the inflated reliance on tuition is a result of the University's policy of spending less than 5 percent of its endowment per year. As pointed out by The Wall Street Journal, and evident to anyone with a calculator, the University could completely get rid of the need for tuition simply by spending a few percent more of its endowment.

Can you imagine the benefits that Princeton would reap if it took such a bold and innovative step? Our applicant numbers would shoot up, as Princeton suddenly became that much more enticing to prospective college students across the world. Our yield, too, would increase, as fewer people would choose Harvard or Yale when Princeton is free. As Rauch points out, these "super applicants," who have multiple offers of admission from top colleges across the country, would greatly enrich the intellectual and cultural life of Old Nassau.

More importantly, a free Princeton would offer a truly meritocratic education. While our current aid packages are generous, many of the brightest minds from low-income families are drawn away by the reduced tuition or full scholarships offered by instate colleges. With free enrollment, FitzRandolph Gate would be open to all, regardless of their financial status.

Just as Harvard's unilateral decision to end its early admissions program lead other top colleges, including Princeton, to follow suit, a spontaneous tuition cut by Nassau Hall could spur change across the Ivy League. We should hope for a domino effect, where Princeton's relative advantage is lost, but higher education on the whole is made much more affordable as other colleges drop costs to remain competitive.

So why has Princeton not done this yet? When asked by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal, President Tilghman replied that it was "the wrong economic model," as she couldn't "justify the use of our resources to make free something that [she] knows roughly half the class can afford."

I don't think that Tilghman's response is sufficient. Any "resources" lost could easily be recovered by a capital campaign premised on the idea of making a Princeton education affordable to everyone. (Princeton's newest capital campaign aims to raise $1.75 billion, or about 10 times the revenue from tuition). Or, if Tilghman is worried about the injustice of subsidizing the education of the Rockefellers among us, then a perfectly reasonable first step would be to target the 50 percent of students that she admits cannot afford Princeton's tuition. By offering them a free education, Princeton could still demonstrate a strong commitment to social mobility and equality of opportunity.

At the end of the day, it's a strange and unfair arrangement in which families struggling to make ends meet have to pay thousands of dollars to a school with a $13 billion endowment, all because that school caps endowment spending at 5 and not 7 percent per year. Abolishing tuition is feasible, and it would be one of the most daring and praiseworthy steps the University has ever taken. Jason Sheltzer is a molecular biology major from St. Davids, Pa. He can be reached at sheltzer@princeton.edu.