I'm under the impression that you still need to qualify and be accepted into the school to get the free education, but this is incredible.  

congrats to the 8 people that get in and qualify for this!!!!! 

Not knocking this at all, but most if not all the Ivy/other top schools (MIT, Stanford, etc) have something like this already in place. 

I'm very happy to see Washu is jumping in though. Their employee dependent tuition support is also fantastic.  

^I think this is long overdue, really. Would have made my day back in my undergrad days.

My U City neighbors and I sure wish Wash U would make a pledge to establish a Payments in Lieu of Taxes program to offset all of the properties they have removed from the tax rolls. 

Just sayin'. 

I am glad that it is including families up to 75k a year, as that includes many middle class families that get totally screwed over by the current financial aid system which assumes that working people have tens of thousands of dollars just lying around to spend on their childrens' college.

I think it's fantastic that WashU is now offering this, but I have to say that I find the rate at which college education costs are increasing is terrifying. It's way, way, way above the rate of inflation. I attended SLU in the late 1990s, and the annual total cost at that time was around $20K/year, which included tuition, fees, room and board, etc. Today the cost at that school is just under $60K/year. WUSTL is now at $72K/year total cost. That's more money per year than more than half of all American households make in an entire year.

At that rate of increase, if you had a kid today, you can probably anticipate the total cost of a 4 year degree at Wash. U. for the Class of 2041 to be somewhere in the range of $600K-800K. For a bachelor's degree. That's insane.

My nephew is planning on entering medical school in about 2 years, and he fully expects to finish his MD program with more than $250K in student loan debt. Can't wait for the trillion dollar student loan bubble to burst and all the hell that will cause.

^To be fair, the ries has not been equal. In the 90s When SLU was 20K/yr SLU was just about 40. So in the time it's taken SLU to tripple  Wash U has maybe doubled. College educations have absolutely gotten more expensive, but the bulk of the rise in cost has come in the bottom half of the equation. Things have flattened out some as states cut support for public universities. SLU may have risen a bit more than average as they're trying to go fancified and selective in a way they weren't in the 90s. But they're hardly the worst case. And Wash U, if your numbers are correct, has actually kept costs down admirably. I'm . . . a little shocked at that, to tell you the truth. 72 a year for the whole ball of undergraduate wax?

All that said, I'm completely in favor of bringing costs down. We could start by raising state contributions back to the inflation adjusted level of 1990. And requiring commensurate cuts in in-state tuition. On the other hand, that would require a legislature that actually prioritized education. Which . . . ain't going to happen anytime soon.

Increased state support for higher education would not change costs at private universities like Wash U or SLU, however.

^Not directly, no. But if everyone in the state with the required academic wherewithal could go to a very well funded and highly academically competitive state university for 5K a year versus the cost of private (72K/yr for example), don't you think that would result in some increased competition? Private being more aggressive with scholarships/actually using their endowments to attract top students, etc?

A very interesting conversational path in general as I personally think the current state of higher education is one of the leading causes of decreased economic growth across the board (along with Health Care costs), but all of this of course is extremely OT to this thread 

I don't think it's completely OT. I would say Wash U is, in essence, trying to address some part of that need with their pledge. You can look at it more cynically, but I think they at least want to build some goodwill by making some motions in that direction. Now it's time for other entities to pitch in and put their money where their growth is.

I expect no real change at Wash U. Blind admissions hasn't exactly made the Ivies bastions of economic equality. Inequality continues to worsen in our society and elite educational institutions are not the mechanism for ameliorating it.

As a U City resident, I'm still disappointed (and surprised) that Wash U hasn't implemented a PILOT program. Their voracious appetite for acquiring real estate has taken many, many properties off the tax rolls. 

"Dear WashU: Please pay your taxes"
https://www.studlife.com/forum/2021/10/ ... our-taxes/

I have a hard time being sympathetic to U City when they passed up on tax base with the apt proposal at the west end of the Loop and left the parking lot north of Cicero's as off limits to development in the Parkview Gardens plan.
Besides they're going to be in Fat City with the Costco coming.

quincunx wrote: ↑

Oct 08, 2021

I have a hard time being sympathetic to U City when they passed up on tax base with the apt proposal at the west end of the Loop and left the parking lot north of Cicero's as off limits to development in the Parkview Gardens plan.
Besides they're going to be in Fat City with the Costco coming.

U City seems to be pretty dysfunctional these days - chasing Costco dollars (and isn't a QuikTrip being considered in response to a development RFP on Olive??) while proximate areas (East Loop, Skinker-DeBaliviee, Grove, DeBaliviere Place) are seeing single family, multi-family, and multi-use infill.

They do have some proposals/projects for increased density around 170/Delmar/Delcrest though. 

wabash wrote: ↑

Oct 08, 2021

quincunx wrote: ↑

Oct 08, 2021

I have a hard time being sympathetic to U City when they passed up on tax base with the apt proposal at the west end of the Loop and left the parking lot north of Cicero's as off limits to development in the Parkview Gardens plan.
Besides they're going to be in Fat City with the Costco coming.

U City seems to be pretty dysfunctional these days - chasing Costco dollars (and isn't a QuikTrip being considered in response to a development RFP on Olive??) while proximate areas (East Loop, Skinker-DeBaliviee, Grove, DeBaliviere Place) are seeing single family, multi-family, and multi-use infill.

They do have some proposals/projects for increased density around 170/Delmar/Delcrest though. 

I pretty much have chalked olive in UC up as a lost cause. Build whatever at this point. I’ll use Costco and QT so you might as well put them on olive and keep everything like that there. It’s all strip malls and fast food until you get almost to the loop already.

I still want to see a lane taken out on delmar from 170 to the loop. They did redo all the crossings at 170 and delmar. It’s better now. The apartment building going up there I would think should start soon. They have the old one torn down. Haven’t heard anything on the ones west of 170 in awhile.

But now I’m getting way off topic….

I'm pretty much at a point where the whole For Profit and Non-profit should be abolished from the tax code outright.  Whether your an individual, a corporation (also consider a person in law), entity or organization, if you own property or collect revenues/gifts that generates an income it should all be considered taxable.   Like everything else in our tax code it just gets to be a mess and those with financial means whether your a Billionaire or Wash U take advantage of the situation as you see with everything from endowments to off campus residents.  Sorry, don't care if someone thinks the world greatest charity need to be tax exempt or your own house of worship.  We simply have created another form of have and have nots  or uneven taxation when it comes to supporting local services and schools.

Got way off topic but I can't help to think why laws couldn't be enacted such that an institution as Wash U has a defined boundary or campus and therefore a investment or ownership in a revenue generating real estate is subject to the same property taxes as the property next door.    Maybe not so much for income tax but property taxes are defined by or governed by state laws.    In other words, tax exemption not based on the owner but limited to a defined location.    

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Oct 04, 2019

^ That is unfortunate, I’m a little surprised they don’t honestly...don’t they pay some PILOTs in the City for the Med Campus?  Or is that BJC?  Either way, this new chancellor seems open to furthering the University’s ties to the region...maybe now is a good time for U City to broach the subject again.

I think universities like Wash U. have become essentially for-profit tax shelters, and need to have their tax exemptions revoked.

If your endowment jumps from $9 billion to $15 billion in one fiscal year, you're not a not-for-profit entity anymore. Perhaps if that money were being used to offer an undergraduate education that costs less than a quarter of a million dollars I might feel differently.

And yes, I feel the same way about all of these top tier schools with multi-billion dollar tax shelters.