Tuition-free MIT an exploration of some ideas by Philip Greenspun At Left: Three MIT undergrads and the wardrobe they were able to purchase after paying their term bill.

Suppose you got a brochure from United Airlines listing the fare from Boston to San Francisco as $1 million. However, the brochure stated that "because of our commitment at United Airlines to ensuring that every American gets the transportation that is his birthright, we offer financial aid." The brochure comes with forms in which you list every scrap of money that you have. You are instructed to send this into United Airlines along with a certified copy of your tax returns so that they can evaluate your need. A few days later, United Airlines writes back: "Great news. We have evaluated your financial situation and have determined that if we take more than $1,000 out of you, you'll be reduced to the homeless shelter. So we're awarding you $999,000 in financial aid and you only have to give us $1,000 to fly from Boston to San Francisco.

Does this make you applaud the philanthropy of United Airlines? Or do you just say "those bastards colluded with the other airlines to set an outrageous fare. Then they are behaving like a classical profit-maximizing monopoly by engaging in price discrimination, i.e., charging each customer the maximum amount that he can afford to pay."

[If United were following all of the university traditions, then they would have "overlap meetings" with the other airlines to make sure that Delta did not mistakenly offer you $999,500 in financial aid and cloud your decision about which airline to fly because of monetary considerations. The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division and a federal judge's ruling put an end to this tradition in 1992, however. In theory.

In fact, we're still colluding with other schools. We just don't sit down at a table with them anymore. As long as every school is using the same algorithm to determine financial need, no brilliant student will be offered a substantially better deal by any cartel member. Did you ever wonder why top universities are at such pains all the time to reassure you that they only award financial aid based on need? Well, they aren't talking to you. They are signaling to competitors they aren't cheating on the cartel by offering a kid with double 800 SAT scores a break. Here's some evidence:

" Are there any merit-based financial aid awards at Harvard-Radcliffe? No, we admit students based on their strengths and talents, but all Harvard-administered aid is based only on financial need." (http://adm-is.fas.harvard.edu/Finfaq.htm; January 9, 1998)

No, we admit students based on their strengths and talents, but all Harvard-administered aid is based only on financial need." (http://adm-is.fas.harvard.edu/Finfaq.htm; January 9, 1998) "Yale College does not offer academic or athletic scholarships or any other type of special scholarship not based on demonstrated need." (http://www.yale.edu/admit/financing.html; January 9, 1998)

"We are proud of our commitment to need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid." (http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/org/f/finaid/; January 9, 1998)

"All Princeton aid is awarded after a determination of need. We do not give merit aid based on your academic, extracurricular, or athletic accomplishments." (http://www.princeton.edu/pr/admissions/aid_QandA.html; January 9, 1998)

There is some tuition price at which it becomes impossible for a university to avoid the appearance of greed. Note that in many Far Eastern traditions, you cannot be respected as a teacher or a doctor if you charge money for your services. Can we be respected if we charge $25,000/year? $50,000/year?

It is corrupting us

Perhaps we used to believe this. And perhaps some of us still believe it consciously. But subconsciously, the truth seems to be that students are seen as our primary cash cow. When MIT had to pay $1.85 million to children unwittingly subjected to a radiation experiment in the 1940s and 1950s, VP for Research and Dean for Graduate Education J. David Litster said "I look on it as the tuition of 20 students" ( The Tech , January 7, 1998, http://the-tech.mit.edu/V117/N65/bfernald.65n.html).

Why should we care?

"It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man! Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse."

-- Iago, Othello , Act I, Scene I

Better students? If you had a child with nerd tendencies who was admitted to both Harvard and MIT, where would you send him? Honestly. It is going to cost you $150,000 and you'd be a fool not to ask yourself whether Harvard or MIT graduates make more money in the long run. At which school is he more likely to meet children of the aristocracy, people with family wealth (e.g., Bill Gates) who are certain to rise to positions of influence? What kind of a university can we have if all of our students were either rejected from Ivy League colleges or were too impractical to realize that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton provide better value for the staggering price?

Better society? If you graduated from MIT with $100,000 in debt and a love for engineering, would you go to work designing anti-lock brakes for $50,000/year? Or would you go to medical school so that you could join a profession where the average income is over $150,000/year? My top students in Course 6 are all telling me that they don't want to be engineers. They are heading for professional school. We will live in a society where the best educated engineers are not designing anti-lock brakes. They are either managing comparatively poorly educated people who are designing anti-lock brakes, stitching up wounds in people who were injured by faulty anti-lock brakes, or defending companies that got sued for their anti-lock brake systems that didn't work. You don't find too many law school graduates who aren't practicing law or too many medical school graduates are aren't treating patients or doing medical research. Yet so many MIT-educated engineers and scientists have left their fields.

More money?!? Every time we collect a dollar from a student, it seems to go right to our bottom line. What we don't consider is that each extra dollar collected from students makes it more difficult to collect from donors. If we were charging $1 million/student, would any rich person give us money? Do rich people make donations to United Airlines? Or do they assume that, since United is charging as much as the market will bear, they probably don't need the money as much as other charities. I'm not the kind of rich person that universities court for donations, but I did recently give away my minivan. A number of charities with full-time salaried bureaucracies and sources of revenue were put forward. I ended up giving the van instead to a husband-and-wife team running a no-kill animal shelter, mostly with their personal funds. I thought they needed it more. As we raise tuition prices, it will become increasingly expensive to educate donors as to why we need their money too.

Why do I care?

[Actually, there probably is but I give it away free to anyone who cares to grab http://www.photo.net/wtr/dead-trees/;and I can't teach it at MIT because we don't have relational database servers available for student use :-( ]

Even if we can be sure that our education is worth $100,000 or more, should we charge as much as we can get? Should MIT operate by the same rules as, say, Microsoft? Despite our high tuition rates, there are still more applications than places here at MIT, so why not maximize profit? We don't have to go too far down this road before we must face the fact that MIT is a collection of people who are, though just as greedy as the owners/employees of Microsoft, not nearly as smart (since MIT is not as financially successful as Microsoft). We have to at least avoid the appearance of greed and profit maximization or people will think that we were too stupid/incompetent/lazy to get jobs at more successful institutions.



If we can't milk students, where do we get money?

MIT undergrads, however, are mostly going into fields where the government and a handful of large corporations are the primary employers. The government needs to hire thousands of relatively brilliant people at relatively low wages (compared to the professions) to design weapons, build bridges, clean up the environment, etc. The Fortune 500 for whatever reason has decided to pay their CEOs 50-500 times what an engineer might make. Yet they still need well-trained intelligent engineers to make new products work and root out Year 2000 bugs.

It can't be that tough to drive up to General Motors in a Toyota Sienna and say "If you give us the big bucks, we'll steal the smart people away from Harvard and B-school and send you some engineers who can make your cars as reliable as this one." We can also find crotchety old nerds who made $millions in high-tech companies and who are disgusted at being surrounded by MBAs and consultants. Isn't it more compelling to ask for money to mold a generation of brilliant engineers and scientists than for a new building for the Media Lab or Sloan School? Yet we have had little trouble getting the money for such structures.

Could we become leaner?

Certainly a tuition-free MIT immediately becomes $millions/year leaner. We wouldn't need to have a financial aid office. We would not need to offer student loans and therefore would not need to administer those loans or hire people to collect money from deadbeat students/parents. We would not need people to write brochures and Web pages describing financial aid policies or student loan offerings. We would not need to pay people to argue about whether those policies were fair. We would not need to pay lawyers to make sure we didn't get sued again by the Feds.

Note: I'm not talking about grad school

What am I actually doing?

I have decided to stop personally participating in the system of extracting money from MIT kids and their families. On Thursday, March 12, 1998, I guest-lectured an MIT class (on designing database-backed Web services). I calculated that the students were paying about $80 in tuition/lecture-hour. I withdrew a stack of $100 bills from my BankBoston account and I handed one out to each undergraduate in the course. I then proceeded to give my talk, telling the students that I was happy to teach them but I was not going to take their money.

Anxious to get the MIT community to read this Web page and take practical steps toward becoming tuition-free, I sent some e-mail to the student newspaper (the Tech). Right after I sent that off, I thought to myself "maybe I can get my dog Alex into the New York Times two months in a row" and sent some e-mail about the give-back to Bill Dedman, the Times reporter who ran a photo of Alex back in February to illustrate a story about some of my research. The staff at the student newspaper never answered my e-mail or showed up and the New York Times called my house at the last minute to say that they had to pull their journalists off to cover the breaking "asteroid is going to destroy Earth in 2028" story. But word of the event leaked out and a variety of reporters showed up or called for the story, including Jon Marcus from Associated Press, Richard Chacon from the Boston Globe, and crews from two local TV stations (Channels 4 and 5).

My friend Jin watched me on Channel 5 and said that I looked like "a homeless psycho". The next day, the story was one of two on the front page of the Boston Herald. Newspapers from the London Times to Chosun Ilbo (Korea) picked it up. CNN ran the video from the local Boston stations. It was on NPR Morning Edition and talk radio stations around the country. The BBC called me for a radio interview that they broadcast in Europe.

Here's what one of my readers sent me:

"Getting the media involved is a terrific idea, but not without its hiccups. Every hour between newscasts on my local radio station a doddering Paul Harvey spews a blurb about MIT professor Phil Greenspan(sic) who *has* to pay his students $100 to get them to attend class... and only four showed up. Sigh."

If the press didn't present my ideas exactly as I would have liked or the facts quite as they were, all the publicity at least encouraged some folks to come to this Web page.

What can one person accomplish?

Was it worth it? Obviously being interviewed in all of these newspapers and radio shows has taken some time and enraged various MIT bigshots who can squash me like a bug. But I knew it was worth it when one faculty member, a genuinely nice guy, came to me and told me that I was mistaken: MIT was very generous with students and the cartel financial aid policies substantially assisted poor families. Anyone who wanted to attend MIT would be able to do so without undue financial duress. It turned out that his own secretary had in fact dropped out of MIT around the time of the Justice Department prosecution of MIT. She and her family decided that they couldn't afford for her to graduate. She had worked for this faculty member for five years and was not shy about telling her story to anyone who asked. He had never asked.

What can 10,000 people accomplish?

The need for education is growing even faster than the world's population. If we are such great technologists, can we not come up with ways to distribute much of our knowledge to interested people worldwide? We could do the obvious things, e.g., putting Internet connections and cameras in our classrooms so that lectures are available on the Web as streaming video. Schools like Stanford have been doing this (with analog video) for decades with mixed success. We will need fundamentally improved computer programs that facilitate interactions among students and teachers so that (1) it is easier for instructors to put course materials on-line, (2) students physically on campus have a richer experience, (3) students who are off campus can look over the shoulders of those on campus, and (4) students who are off campus can have their own community and interaction.

If we are the great programmers that we claim to be, it ought to be possible to do this so that the cost to MIT is minimal and so that there is no loss of focus among the people physically on campus. What about the people off campus? Can the average person really learn without structure and externally imposed deadlines? Perhaps not. But that doesn't mean we at MIT should add "handholding those who aren't on campus" to our plate. If we engineer our collaboration systems properly, it should be possible for third parties to organize traditional or Web-centric classes using MIT lectures and course materials. We can even let them use our servers for private collaboration among their students and teachers. The marginal cost to us will be small (I have been doing stuff like this personally since 1995: http://www.photo.net/philg/services.html).

Anyway, that's my ideal world: a high school girl in Vietnam with a cable modem attending all the MIT classes that she wants.

I've been taking some small personal steps in this direction. I've been doing research on the best ways to build community-style Web sites, of which a site for a class is one example. I've been doing research on ways to manage Web services so that multiple community maintainers can share one computer and RDBMS installation. I've figured out how to do all of this with practically zero budget for administration and support. Currently my software is in use for 6.001, MIT's introductory computer science course. We'll see how it goes...





philg@mit.edu

Reader's Comments

Delightful suggestions. One number which would be relevant to the analysis, but which is not well publicized by either of the obscenely wealthy Universities I've been associated with is the ratio Alumni donations/Tuition income. I've often wondered whether the alumni donations could pay the administrators while the tuition income could pay the migrant lecturers and keep the buildings standing and the libraries filled. If so, and if the administrators could simply be persuaded to leave-- but I think that's the hard part.



-- L W, March 12, 1998

I do not know that I agree with your basis premise, but I apppaud your guts and commitment. It is very ususual in our to society to see: 1) Someone who actually puts his convictions into action; 2) Someone who personally pays to put his position into action; 3) Someone who is willing to go against such a powerful institution; 4) Someone with a stack of hundreds.



-- Tom Shea, March 12, 1998

I had five years at Oxford University in England -- and neither tuition nor maintenance cost me a penny (both under- and post-grad degrees). This is all about to change, as the UK goes down the pay your own way route. What a mistake! However, I would have to say, that very broadly, the American students I met, at both stages, (and there were a lot) were much, much, more highly motivated and focused than we were. Academics I know who have taught on both sides of the Atlantic confirm this. I am afraid that I think that this does have something to do with the financial commitments that US university education demands. (This is especially so in the humanities, where in the US they are a passport to graduate schools). I applaud your gesture, however.



-- Martin Davidson, March 13, 1998

I love the analogy to United Airlines. Still, I too wonder if students will value their educations as much and work as hard if they are not paying. I also wonder if MIT could become still more unresponsive to student needs/desires if no tuition was involved. Perhaps one solution to the former would be to charge a tuition based upon your record/grades so far. Or alternatively, just pay students that get good grades!



-- Bob Givan, March 13, 1998

I applaud your gesture and sentiments sincerely. However.... We have a society (in America) in which the basic building blocks of a fruitful life are not available equitably in any sense of the word. To wit as long as there are problems in areas such as: 1) housing from the obvious (the homeless) to the anonymous people living in substandard public housing. 2) no universal health care. 3) horrible public schools (and I'm talking about the physical structures and "food" even more than the teaching) for our children. 4) the unbelievable subsidies given to the most polluting of our transportation alternatives - automobiles and airplanes - at the expense of public transportation. I find it hard to get too worked up over the notion however valid it may be of universal access for brilliant children to MIT. Nonetheless, thanks for your thoughts, actions, and for providing this forum for reply.



-- Bill Allen, March 13, 1998

I should respond to Bob Givan, if only because we were office mates at MIT and he was kind enough to help me solve many a thorny math problem... I think Bob's point that a research school like MIT is in danger of becoming completely unresponsive to undergrads is a good one. I'm personally dismayed that, even right now when we're charging undergrads $100,000/pop, I have a better chance of getting run over in Harvard Square by a Boeing 747 than I do of getting MIT to pay for the development of facilities for or a class in databases, Web-supported collaboration, or anything of the other things that I do. I guess this is all wrapped up in the "no credit for an academic career will be given for anything other than a paper in a journal" philosophy of modern universities. I don't want to fight or argue against that right now, but at least we should stop making the undergrads pay for our little club.



-- Philip Greenspun, March 13, 1998

It is all well and good for one to get up on a soapbox and point out the failings of the world, but it is another thing entirely to take a productive physical action to correct those failings. However once you step down from that soapbox and make that first physical action, you can not stop. There must be more actions to follow. These actions need to attract those that feel the same way and in turn cause them to act positively. This is the way all great change occurs. I am a prospective MS Chemical Engineer who when choosing college picked it for the price. I would have liked to attend Princeton, or MIT, or Georgia Tech, but since my parents are farmers/teachers I choose to go to Tennessee Technological University. I got a good education in the basics of Chemical Engineering. Any deficiencies I might have are directly my own fault, and therefore I say was it better to bankrupt my parents to get an education that was for the most part only in name better? I have decided the answer is no. I would like to say that in the end it all comes down to you as an individual. Remember you are your own best teacher, whatever you might be learning. If you don't beleive me then spend some time looking at all those self-taught scientific greats and you might just change your mind.



-- Sam Morton, March 13, 1998

Phil's giving $100 bills to his students should be viewed independently from the notion of making MIT tuition free. Phil has selected a group of students that he feels will contribute something valuable to society (the ones interested in his lecture on) making database-backed web sites, and he's choosing to subsidize their education directly. Similarly, if companies or the government feel that a better engineer offers better value, they're better off subsidizing that engineer directly, perhaps before school through scholarships or better-yet after graduation through higher salaries (which can support borrowing to pay for tuition) and which will attract more students to engineering. This also has the effect of giving students the choice to attend the university that they believe offers them the best engineering degree for the money. While engineering salaries might not equal that for an orthopedic surgeon or McKinsey partner, they're overall not that bad. Why they're not higher is an interesting question. As an aside, note that the government does make tuition free for engineering students at some universities: the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, West Point, the US Coast Guard academy. Also, for a free engineering education, students can go to Cooper Union in New York City.



-- Richard Lethin, March 15, 1998

Richard, you're a genius and a good friend (and a thoughtful old-style computer scientist), but you've missed my point. I didn't give the kids back their money because I wanted to subsidize them; I gave them back their money because I can longer accept the idea that they and their families are subsidizing me. I didn't want to personally profit from a system that I've claimed is unjust (and that the federal government claimed was unlawful). Not only do I think it is unjust, but, though at one time it might have been very profitable, I think it is no longer in our institution's best interest. One thing that I should really add to my article is a stronger argument against using economic reasoning. In my opinion, MIT should not operate by the same rules as, say, Microsoft. Just because the market will bear our prices doesn't mean that we should constantly strive to maximize profit. If we go down that road then we must inevitably face the fact that MIT is a collection of people who are, though just as greedy as the owners/employees of Microsoft, not nearly as smart (since MIT is not as financially successful as Microsoft). We have to at least avoid the appearance of greed and profit maximization or people will just think that we were too stupid/incompetent/lazy to get jobs at more successful institutions.



-- Philip Greenspun, March 15, 1998

I truly think that MIT could save a lot of money if they did not have to support a huge administrative body that does very little!



-- luigi vacca, March 16, 1998

I would like to echo the comments of the gentleman that commented about the free educations in Britain and the apthy of the students there. If students don't pay something they won't repect the chance they are getting. However, as a person who experienced (like Phil), the doubling of tuition when I was in school, and who now has kids only 10 years away from college, I think that students (parents) ought to pay, just not so much. Colleges should be more lean and mean, funds should be sought from more alternate sources, and students ought to pay $5000 a year. That's it. Bravo to Phil and his public stand on the issue. To swipe a phrase from the folks at be.com, "Resistance is not futile!" Keep up the good work.



-- Robert Dodson, March 16, 1998

As a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon (sort of a down-market MIT ;-) who did not pay any tuition (Dad was faculty) I can endorse this idea whole-heartedly. In addition I can add some thoughs on the economic equation here: 1) the cost of attending college would not be zero even if the tuition were zero - the cost of living is still non-zero, and supporting oneself while attending college full time is not without difficulty. In addition there's the 'oppurtunity cost' of lost earnings during the time one attends college. Presumably the pay back in earning power will more than compensate for this, but it is a risk. 2) I think that universities would benefit from this as well by removing the incentives for 'grade inflation'. Its tough to flunk out someone who's contributing 100K to your top line ;-). 3) the instinct to not value anything thats free is a well known phenomena, btw. for instance chess clubs will often charge for introductory lessons that they would happily provide for free because it helps attendance and insures that the instructor isn't wasting their time. I think that making the grading more rigorous would help to limit that problem by making a high GPA more meaningful, and thus making the resulting degree more valuable.



-- Lee Schumacher, March 16, 1998

Robert mentions $5000/year in his message two slots up. It is funny because that's almost exactly the figure that I calculated as the cost of educating a college student if classroom space and Ph.D. lecturers were purchased at market rates ($30 sq. ft. for downtown office space and $2000/course for a Ph.D.; sorry about the low price for the instructor but that actually is the market rate right now (I know because I have a bunch of friends who are teaching classes for this price)). If you think it sobering that office space costs more than Ph.D. instructors, then you need to read http://photo.net/philg/careers.html :-) Lee raises a good point in the above message. The opportunity cost of not working is quite high here in the U.S. Perhaps European students linger in school and appear to take it less seriously than Americans not because of the free tuition but because there aren't any jobs for youth in Europe. Lee's point #2 about the difficulty of flunking a student who is paying the rent is a good one. I was having an argument about MIT's policies of race discrimination in admissions with a friend of mine who works in the MIT administration. She was defending MIT's policies as noble, despite the high dropout rate of those admitted to fill quotas. I asked her how hard she thought MIT would work to fill race quotas if we had to refund the tuition dollars of those who dropped out. She didn't like the idea too much...



-- Philip Greenspun, March 16, 1998

As someone who attended CMU, who has seen friends flunk out, and who left voluntarily myself, I have to say that its administration has no problem flunking out someone who contributes directly to the bottom line. From what I gather they have a pitiful endowment & low alumni contributions* so tuition actually winds up paying significantly for undergrad courses. (*MIT students joke about hating the place. A not-insignificant number of CMU students really do.) I applaud Phil's actions. If nothing else, a tuitionless school would remove a significant barrier to success: The stress of knowing you're bankrupting your parents, making good performance all the more necessary. I know it was so for me. I bet it was for a lot of the people who killed themselves



-- Chris Hanson, March 18, 1998

I also applaud Phil's actions. It is refreshing to see someone taking action on his beliefs. I'm sure it was refreshing for those students too. I do have mixed feelings about free tuition though. If all the students who would attend a tuition-less MIT were like Phil then there's no doubt that it would work. That's not likely to be the case though. I, like Phil, spend a great deal of time thinking of ways to improve things, wondering why something/someone doesn't work/think this way or that way, etc. My response is usually "wel...not everyone is like me." I think that applies here. Never the less, I agree about the excessive cost, but I also agree about lazy students. Lets face it. money drives things in America. Its unfortunate, but its true so until that changes, we have to work within that framework. Someone mentioned something about the value of "free." This is my main concern...I would love to see an increase in the percieved value of something that is free. To this end, I also applaud Phil's other efforts to benefit the web community throughout this site. Well done!



-- Justin Loeber, March 19, 1998

A recurring trend here has been the mention that making a school tuition free will result in lazy unmotivated students. It doesn't seem that this would necessarily be the case for the following reason: Say a school has a certain capacity of undergraduates it can run through it's system in each year. Eliminating tuition dramatically increases the acceptance rate vs offers extended which would result in too many students. To maintain the numbers at the previous levels one would obviously then have to make fewer offers to more carefully picked people. Theoretically the school then ends up with undergrads who are less likely to be 'lazy' to begin with and can always be kicked out if they develop 'lazy' habits. Now the problem with this model is that schools are often not terribly good at discerning people who would be exemplary students from those who would be mediocre. This model seems to show that the emphasis would be placed even more strongly on the schools opinion of current and prospective students. So, which tradeoff is better? fairness in regards to wealth? Or a slightly increased error of merit based selection? (Along with a vastly increased sense of paranoia, extreme competition, etc.) Everything in life is a tradeoff. Our quest should be to find the sweet spots.. Like 2 f-stops down.. Oh well, it won't affect me personally again for some time as I think I'm done with the academic world for now..



-- George Pang, March 20, 1998

I have long considered tuition and financial aid grants a mechanism for price discrimination. I would prefer a system where family finances are completely isolated from the process. Schools should compete fiercly for the very best students. Candidates with doulble 800 SAT scores should be offered low-cost educations, no matter what their family financial situation. That way, presumambly, society will direct resources to those who can best benefit, and contribute, from the investment. There is also the problem of early and secondary public education. We do not have a system that offers anything even close to equal opportunity (as opposed to Equal Employment Opportunity attempts of equal outcome).



-- Robert Budding, March 20, 1998

Having graduated from a private university considered world class in the engineering specialty I chose, and having followed employeement for 9 years at one of the largest and most successful corporations in the world with 8 years of successful self self employment, I long ago concluded that while engineering fundamentals are essential building blocks to one's capabilities, the individual's desire and intelligence will ultimately govern performance in the real world regardless of educational pedigree. A quality education is much less dependent on the effort that the university puts forth than that of the student. A university education should be a means to an end, not the end itself. When competing against or collaborating with other professionals I could give a shit less which university siphoned off their money. What I do care about is how are they capable of performing. In my experience this does not necessarily correlate with the reputation of the university from which they graduated. The answer then, it would seem to me is take the full ride at OU or wherever and forget all the hand wringing over whether your son or daughter is being cheated out of the educational benefits of the most expensive degrees money can buy.



-- G Deen, March 20, 1998

I'm the product (or soon to be one, anyway) of a Canadian schooling. Now, while we like to think we do a lot of things better than you yanks ;) I can sy for certain that our post-secondary education system (publicly subsidized) is prob. as good as many of the schools in the States. Yes, I include Ivy League/private schools in that statement. I agree with the basic tenet - it is unfair for the student (and his/her family) to take the brunt of the educational cost when that education has uncompensated externalities to society. I think most will agree that an MIT education is not only beneficial to the student who gets it, but to society. The only challenge is in assessing what is basically an economic (read: ethereal) number. Another comment, about distance education. I'm all for it. The U of Alberta, while good, simply cannot afford the quality of instruction that some other places can. I think the future of undergraduate education will move to regional systems with "superclasses" taught by extremely good professors, with the costs for the technology and instruction borne by several institutions. This has the effect of spreading the costs and the benefits out to many more people. However, what do you think about a "critical mass" theory, such as Porter's? He believes that a geography-based mass of talent afforded an industry (whether it be the Detroit automotive sector, Silicon Valley, MIT, or Hollywood), has a greater positive effect than disparate groups of people. Will the girl in Vietnam with the cable modem get a "true" MIT education, or is the culture of campus (hacks, suicide, hot n' humid Mass weather, high stress, late nights) also important?



-- Chris Neuman, March 27, 1998

The question that I am trying to answer as an entering freshman is what will my rewards be for such a monetary investment? As Philip pointed out, with tuition rates propelling at a ever- increasing rate it would appear foolish to pursue a career in art(my passion), while the true return on my parents investment would be the wrangling of an M.B.A.. Unfortuately, I am seeing students select majors that will not satisfy themselves passionately, but financially.



-- Jason George, April 7, 1998

As is common in Europe, higher education is free in the Czech Republic as well (for Czech students, that is - foreigners must pay a great deal, and I'll add that the government here is now trying to introduce tuition for all students). I think the system of free higher education is wonderful, and wish I'd been able to take advantage of something like this (I am an American). One thing to look out for, however, is students "lingering on" in school for as many as ie 8 years before getting a BA, or dropping out needlessly. Of course, this happens everywhere - but it makes the system more inefficient & should be especially discouraged in an environment where the student is not paying his or her own way. If I were Boss of All Universities Everywhere, I'd consider the advantages of making just the standard 4 (or however many for your field) years free, and those who don't finish in the standard period of time would pay for each additional semester (year, whatever :) Thanks for a wonderful site. PS It *is* hot and humid in Vietnam! :)



-- Nora Mikes, April 9, 1998

I would like to comment on a few subjects: 1) the perceived value of something free. I will just take an example that I think speaks for itself (at least for any computer geek ;-)). Which of the two do you think bears the most value: Linux or Windows ? Which of the two is free ? 2) Free/Cheap education in Europe and in Canada. I took engineering in France at INSA. This a public university which means that tuition fees are very low. I will have to agree with the person from the UK, not all students were highly motivated. However most manage to get their degree in a place where failing a student means less costs (not less profit). So now I have a degree, and I have a job with above-average wages. What that means is that in turn I pay more tax to subsidize universities. To me this is fair. The key I think is that education should be a right (not based on your/ your parents financial situation), not an obligation in order to get a decent life. 3) A good part of the education I got from my University was related to the environment (extra scholar life). The university looks ugly (old early 60's building falling apart, lack of money (?)), but the social life was so predominent that I learned much much more than just engineering. There are over 80 student-run organizations running at cost for a community of 3000 students (imagine paying 10$/year to see 3 movies a week in a theater). I challenge any university with 100K$ fees to have such a dynamic and productive student life. In fact I had the oportunity to spend my final year in Canada (at Ottawa U), and even though the tuition fees are low, the cost of living for a student is a lot higher. The result was that yes students were more "academically" motivated, BUT apart for the minorities groups, I have not seen much student organizations nor any will for them. I think it comes from the fact that most student worry about how they are going to pay for next semester more than how to take advantage of their situation. My opinion is that University is not just about a degree, but it is an environment that should be enabling and provide opportunities for people to experiment and get involved at a community level. I believe that this is better achieved if you relieve students from the stress of finding a place to live and something to eat (and pay the tuitions).



-- Patrick Bihan-Faou, April 11, 1998

After digesting all the interesting comments, I am beginning to see the following points clearly: 1) A student of the nth class can pay to attend a school of class n or get a full ride at a school of class n+1. This seems fair. The main problem which occurs: there are many more students than schools, so that there is a subset of students attending a 1st-class school like MIT who would actually qualify to attend a 0th class school except none exists; thus MIT unlike the 2nd-class, 3rd-class etc, schools faces no competition from above and can collude with the schools of its own class to charge full price. (The 2nd-class schools can't get away with colluding because they face competition from above; also there are too many of them.) The obvious solution is to create a small 0th-class school (maybe small enough that one of the many billionaires in this country could endow it once and for all with a few hundred million dollars so that it could be free; the alumni of such a school would no doubt be much richer and more generous than, say, Harvard grads.) This problem affects the top few percent. A different problem affects the few percent of nth-class students who are actually given a free ride to a school of class n-1 -- it is difficult for the student to resist this temptation but the dangers of accepting it are great. 2) But the broader problem is that the cost is too high for the great majority of 1st-class students who properly belong at MIT and are gouged unconscionably. Everyone seems to recognize that the positive social externalities of giving a 1st-class education to 1st-class students merit some subsidization; the two issues that arise are how high the overall level of subsidization should be and how the subsidies should be distributed. 3) It seems clear that simply redistributing the current subsidy won't help because only a small percentage of students could afford to pay significantly more than they are currently being charged, at the cost of even uglier price discrimination than currently exists. Somehow the aggregate burden on the undergrad students must be reduced. The government subsidizes loans nicely, but direct funneling of tax dollars to the top schools for tuition has severe political and economic drawbacks. On the other hand, where else can such a large amount of money come from? 4) We need a "free lunch". Fortunately, free lunches *do* exist when markets are inefficient. And boy, is this market inefficient! As many people have pointed out in earlier comments, costs at the top schools are insanely high, and the reason is simply that they *can* be, because there is no economic competition as there would be if MIT and Harvard were private companies subject to antitrust laws and shareholder pressure. The people who run the universities don't feel threatened when the bottom line suffers--the effect of runaway costs is well- muffled by the structure of the university. The component that is actually affected in the end is the endowment, which doesn't grow nearly as fast as it should have, but that has an indiscernible impact on the ordinary functioning of the university. 5) So the answer is to do what many American companies successfully did in the 80's and 90's -- improve performance by tying executive compensation more directly to the bottom line. Universities don't have stock options, but why not create endowment options? The president of the school and other important administrators should have base salaries that are quite a bit smaller and bonuses tied strictly to growth in the university's endowment -- they can achieve this by cutting costs, pressuring alumni, or whatever. Naturally this will give them an incentive to keep tuition high, but there is no additional blood to be squeezed from that stone, and the overall improvement in the school's finances from cost-cutting, improved fundraising, etc., will take pressure off the undergrads and in the long run lead to tuition reductions. -- Joe Shipman XVIII '82



-- Joe Shipman, April 18, 1998

What Mr. Greenspun has done is admirable. It is admirable because he has taken a stance when he could have remained seated while making more money. I myself chose to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology because my parents were already paying for an Ivy-League education and I did not want to make them pay for two. I believe that I got an excellent education at Georgia Tech. That is something that the rest of the world admires about the United States, if you want to learn, you can. The resources are there. One of the projects I was involved with at Georgia Tech was all about that, at least to me. It was about giving students and professors more access to resources and better learning and teaching environments. It was about making the lectures available after they had ocurred, so that a student might be able to "experience" the lecture again from their dorm room or home. It was about making all aspects of the material and the way it was portrayed available for someone to access easily. Please look at: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/c2000/index.html I don't see why we can't use these same tools to provide education to anyone who wants it. And I mean anyone anywhere. I myself had to move from South America to attend university here, because those resources were only available here. I would have liked to have the option of getting the education I got from Colombia. Bill Gates wants to put a PC on every desk in the world, well we can use that for our advantage. These PCs will most likely have modems and therefore their users have access to any resources that we, the technocratic upper class, provide. Lets take advantage of this. It is the right thing to do.



-- Yonatan Feldman, April 24, 1998

Someone made the brilliant observation that the government does in fact pay to educate engineers via the US Navel Academy, Air Force Academy, etc. Its sad that I have to point this out, but, IT IS COMPLETELY POINTLESS TO BECOME AN ENGINEER IF ALL YOU ARE EVER GOING TO DO IS FIND BETTER WAYS TO KILL PEOPLE. I'm sure the US governemnt would love for smart people like me and the other 10,000 MIT students to find new ways of killing all those enemies we don't have, but the thought is morally repugnant to me and every other engineering student with a conscience, something money can't buy. Not yet anyway.



-- Mike Salib, April 30, 1998

I'm graduating this spring from highschool, and will soon be heading for college. Many college students are in the boat that their parents are paying for a lot of the college education, and they are getting scholarships, and loans to pay for the rest. I am in a different boat. I am actually spending my own money to go to college. My parents aren't going to help me in any other way than free room and board if I pick a college close enough to live at home. I was accepted at Penn State Main Campus. But when I looked at that and the state college (I'm in PA) up the road from me, I saw that Penn State paid the most attention to their grad students. The state college doesn't have a graduate program for computer science, so the professors pay more attention to undergrad students. Penn State didn't care whether I went there or not, but the state college really wanted me to go. Penn State will leave me having to pay off large college loans, forcing me to take a high paying job to pay the loans off, the state college will leave me debt free at the end of 4 years, able to do what I want, whether that is go to grad school, or take a job as a part time waiter and spend my evenings and weekends creating the best computer games and application software in the world, then giving it away for free. In the end I chose the state college. The quality of courses looked to be on par between the two schools. All Penn State would have offered me is a big name diploma and lots of bills. If I need/want the big name diploma I can go to grad school later.



-- Joshua Boyd, May 13, 1998

I don't live in the USA, but may I suggest that the whole problem you have with "the system" is even more deep seated than you are imagining. In reality, a University education is not really worth a damn. The system exists because... a) Employers like to see the certificate b) It keeps the government unemployment figures down c) Historical reasons. People learn more in 6 months of real work and real life than they do in 4 years of University. I've learnt 500 times more than I ever did at Uni just through personal research in my spare time. I've learnt another 500 times more doing the practical things my job requires. What I learnt at Uni is quite frankly useless - even if I could remember what it was - which I can't. The real answer is to reduce Uni courses from 3 or 4 years down to only one year. Make it much more affordable, the corporate grants would go 3 times further, kids would get out and earn money sooner and waste less time in Uni.



-- anonymous anonymous, May 18, 1998

I applaud Phil's ideas, and I sincerely doubt that any students would value their educations less because Chrysler paid for it instead of Mom. I certainly wouldn't have. When I applied to universities seven years ago, I faced a situation directly impacted by the phenomenal costs of tuition at MIT. I was accepted to MIT for undergrad admissions, but because my "ability to pay" (the amount, after loans, that I'm expected to have out-of-pocket) was set at about $2000 a year, I wasn't able to go. $2000 a year may seem like a steal to most undergrads (or their parents), but my mother was not interested in paying any of my tuition, for reasons I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that I had no choice, and no funds. I was also using the proceeds from my $5/hr after-school job to pay my portion of the rent, for similar reasons, so there was no way in hell that I would have been able to save up the $8-10K necessary by the time I left for MIT. As far as scholarships were concerned, I was out of luck. I had a 1440 SAT score and a genuine desire to learn, but my high school grades were awful because of my constant boredom with the feeble education my San Diego public school provided. I'm male and part of an ethnic group that is assumed to be wealthy, so no help there. In short, I received about $500 in potential aid, far short of what I needed. I ended up going to a local community college for two years while working part time jobs to scrape out a living, then abandoning the whole process to take a full-time job as a Web programmer. I'm currently using the sad salary this produces to pay for my wedding, but I hope to save enough money to transfer to a UC school by fall of 1999. Note that this is about the same time I would have received a Physics Ph.D. had I gone to MIT. I was hoping to develop a quantum theory of gravity (hardly a money-making venture) by this time, perhaps ushering in a revolution in technology the same way electronics and quantum mechanics have. Who knows? Perhaps I still will.



-- Chris Radcliff, June 5, 1998

There is nothing wrong with making lots of money, but I was (once) under the impression that knowledge, learning and research for it's own sake was worthwile and that places of higher education where the place for this to happen. If "higher" education is about only higher money then I think that we are all worse off.



-- Philip Stebbins, June 15, 1998

Dear Phil, in you essay "Why I'm not a writer" you made the following remark in conjunction with a bitter-sweet life story of James Wilcox: "There are people who are good at doing things. There are people who are good at kissing ass and taking credit. These bundles of skills seem to be at odds so that one rarely finds them in the same person. In most areas of human endeavor, if you want to become famous or just put food on the table and are forced to choose between the skill bundles, it is much better to pick ass-kissing and credit-taking." If you combine this remark with the Darwinian theory you'll see why our society is the way it is, probably as long as your remark remains relevant we are doomed to be a species where ass-kissers and credit-takers dominate.



-- Michael Livshits, June 20, 1998

wonderful essay and photographs.... there should be more use of the net for this....



-- alan d. Smith, June 25, 1998

To all those who talk about the money/motivation correlation, I say "not so fast!". While there might be a great motivation the results from spending a great deal of money, Phil is arguing that it's motivating people to do things that are not necessarily as socially productive if they hadn't accumulated a massive debt in the process. Secondly, schools are treating their students more like customers and less like the pupils that they really are. As a results, at Stanford (to name names), the policy is very flexible in permitting students to "buy" an A by dropping a class the day of the final and then re-taking it with out any penalty on one's transcript. If you can "afford" to take extra classes, you can raise your GPA by dropping classes that are below your target GPA. In private high schools, teachers are told by students that since the students pay the tuition, the teacher's job depends on making the students "happy." Here's a radical proposal for sticking with the idea of tuition-free schools and keeping students motivated: give degrees to the students that exhibit the motivation and the competence to deserve the degree, and give no degree to those who don't deserve it. In it's present position, MIT (and other universities) are compelled to give degrees, even when they have not been earned academically because they have been earned [sic] financially.



-- Michael Tiemann, July 14, 1998

I have read some comments where people link the motivation of the students to the tuition they pay. I have a hard time believing in that. I studied international trade at the Sorbonne in Paris for 5 years. The highest tuition I paid was around $500.00 for the last year. So, money was not a concern. However, when you enter, it is made clear to you that, at the end of the first 2 years, only 50% of the students make it to the next year, the number raises to 75% after that. If you fail, you can take the exam one more time the next year. After that, you have to change school, the Sorbonne will not accept you (this was the case for the "Economics" section between 1989 and 1993, it might have changed). Students were pushed to succeed if the ever wanted to graduate and have a chance to enter Ph.D. programs or Masters programs, which judge you only on your academic results. Motivation comes from the sanction of your personal work, not from your wealth. From what I've heard from American friends, it seems easier to move on from one year to the next in American universities (for undergraduates anyway). The difference seems more to be in "how much university you can afford" rather than how good you are (this is a caricature for the sake of my argumentation, do not flame me: I am not saying American students are lazy, French students are hard workers. I am a living proof of the opposite...) With that said, I believe, like Phil, in an "non-money selective" educational system. Yet, I am faced with problematic questions when I try to envisage alternatives. Free or quasi-free schools have one drawback: they have to be financed mainly by public funds i.e. taxpayers, even if their own kids never go to the university. Basically, every year, French taxpayers do exactly what Phil did in his class: they give $100.00 to each French student. However, as opposed to Phil, they don't have the opportunity to choose to do it. I will never be thankful enough to the millions of French taxpayers who provided grants for me and my fellow students. So, on one hand, I agree with Phil that the tuitions requested by the American Ivy League schools are prohibitive. On the other hand, what is a fair alternative? Is it fair to make everybody contribute to something from which they will potentially never get any return? No country can seriously rely on philanthropic funding of its school system. Some isolate case would prove me wrong, but I know I am globally right. I would also be disturbed to see large companies completely fund universities. It would imply that they have some kind of tacit right to also inculcate their corporate culture to students. Universities are supposed to be a placed of free speech and creative thinking, not necessarily turned toward marketable results. Corporate financing goes against that, in my opinion. What will happen to "non-productive" topics, such as art, philosophy, or history? Is any corporation going to see the point of unselfishly funding these sections? You tell me. So far, for me, a socialized school system is the only viable alternative to a private educational system, whether it becomes a virtual university, as Phil prescribes, or not. They both have their pluses and minuses. I still like the socialized system better. One because I have the honesty to admit I used it to my advantage; two, because every students are equal and given an opportunity to be judge on their intrinsic value rather than their family wealth, but, still, it is not a perfect system. I would be interested to see someone, especially our host Phil Greenspun, sharing his/her opinion on that matter.



-- Stephane --, July 17, 1998

So much to say, where to start? I applaud your putting your beliefs into action in this way. I don't agree with everything you are saying, but it is refreshing to see someone 'put their money where their mouth is'. I agree with what you and most of the people here have said about rising administrative costs relative to instructor costs. I think this is inevitable in any large not-for-profit endeavor - as soon as your organization grows large enough to require full-time administrators, these administrators will seize control and start building empires. Just look at what has happened to the health care industry since the creation of the Medicare / Medicaid programs. I also agree that it is high time for industry to start subsidizing education, but on a strictly voluntary basis. Let industry support those educational facilities that provide the most value to industry, this should create some healthy competition. Unfortunately from where I sit (just finishing a gig at a major pharmaceutical mfg) it looks like most of the big companies with big bucks are also run by beancounters (professional managers) who see things differently to them an MBA is worth at least twice as much as an MS. I disagree with the main plank of your plan (free tuition), but before I go into that let me give a little personal background. I graduated from high school in 1975 with about a C+ average. I applied to the local state university (UMKC) and was accepted, but never registered and never attended any college or university, instead I was lucky enough to get a job at one of the many companies that started up and failed in the early days of the micro 'revolution'. A couple more startup/failures and I was on my way to a glorious career in the IS field. Why didn't I go to college? It wasn't for lack of ability. I'm a pretty smart person (when I was about 19 years old an MIT Prof. told me this so it must be true ); my poor grades mostly reflected my lack of motivation and overall boredom with school. At the time I told myself that money was the big factor. True, many people support themselves and pay their own way to college. I wouldn't even have had to support myself. My parents would have supported me; they just couldn't afford to pay for me to go to college (and probably continue to get Cs). At the time I saw college as an extension of high school and I wasnt really motivated enough to flip hamburgers at night and try to stay awake in class all day. Given my background one might think that I would be a supporter of free college tuition. I'm not. And although I don't believe in government subsidized education at any level, this isn't the primary reason I oppose 'free' college education. At one time, the average person had six years of schooling, the 'educated' person had a couple more. I once worked for a man who went to Harvard after ten years of public school. No, he didn't skip any grades, ten years was all that was offered at the time and place where he grew up. When I was a kid, the big advertising push on television was to finish high school. We all grew up knowing that if you wanted to get any kind of decent job (i.e., not digging ditches) you had to have a high school diploma. Today we are close to a situation where the average person entering the workforce has at least two years of college, and to be considered 'educated' you must have at least a master's degree. Is the person with sixteen years of education today (typical BA / BS) really twice as educated as the person with eight years of schooling (six years grammar school, two years of University) two hundred years ago? I don't think so. True, there are many things one has to learn today that they couldn't even imagine then, but I think there are probably almost as many things which were an essential part of daily life then which are only of interest to anthropology / history students today. So, if the BA / BS of today doesn't mean the same thing it did one hundred years ago, what effect will free undergraduate tuition have on the situation? President Clinton wants to make sure that every one who wants one can get a college education. When this is accomplished how will the truly motivated people distinguish themselves? They will have to get even more education. An MS / MA will become as common as a BS / BA is today, and the Ph.D. will become as common as an MS / MA is now. Bottom line: How long can society afford to support people while they get an education? Sixteen years? Twenty years? Thirty years? Is more free education the solution or is it the problem? I agree that the system is broken. I dont think that free tuition is the answer. Thank you for providing this opportunity to express myself.



-- Les Lovesee, July 17, 1998

I'm going to respond to Stephane's thoughtful comments above regarding the French system and a socialized system of education. Stephane: don't lose sight of the fact that I'm not proposing tuition-free education for all Americans at all schools. I've nothing against this idea but I haven't really thought about it. As an employee and graduate of MIT, I'm merely proposing that we (MIT) would be better off as an institution if didn't demand tuition payments. As I note in my article, MIT is in a unique position to get corporate funds because very few of our students are studying the "non-productive" topics you mention ("art, philosophy, and history"). So we don't have to try to educate some crass business executive about the long-term value of studying Milton and Donne. As far as Stephane's comment about universities being places for creative thinking not necessarily turned toward marketable results, let me repeat that it is tough to expect students to live this way if we're reaming them out of $150,000. Most people don't have the luxury of merely spending $150,000; those few lucky enough to get their hands on that kind of money end up thinking instead about how to INVEST it. So the university education becomes an investment on which the student must strive to earn a return. This disheartens me. Much as I love to see some of the MIT kids I've trained earning $175/hour building Web/db applications (they are now worth more to industry than the average CS professor!), I'd really rather see them pursuing truth and beauty.



-- Philip Greenspun, July 18, 1998

I'm posting this anonymously as some of my comments directly relate to the university which I currently attend. I must first say that I am opposed to corporate funding (at least directly) for univeristies as this will almost certainly control the direction and programs offered at the university. While it may work for a very specialised university (such as MIT) it would not work for a more generalised university (such as the one I attend). If a corporation were to fund such a univeristy they would surely only wish to provide funds for programs that they felt would directly benefit their company (such as computer science or engineering for example). This would create the situation where programs deemed less useful by the corp would not receive funding (such as many of the arts programs) which would result in these programs being underfunded (even more so) and thus being removed. I would much rather see a higher system of taxation placed on corporations making large ammounts of money, with the funds going to the universities, based on student population. This money would then go towards providing better quality programs as well as lower tuition fees. As far as not apreciating what is free, I feel that this is somewhat true but is untrue in other ways. Because we must pay for our tuition many students feel they cannot study what they truly want to do but instead study what they feel will give them a job after graduation. Look at the number of comerce or compuer science students as an example. One student I know told me that he was taking comerce because he wanted to make money when he graduates. He was failing badly and went on academic probation. When he returned to school he transfered into theater and is now much happier. By making tuition free (or much cheaper) you would result in encouraging more students to follow what they truly feel motivated to do. If competition for spots in the next year/semester was also increased then this would still encourage students. Students would also be unable to resent this increased competition because they would know that they weren't paying for their school and so competition had to be high. I think that one of the major problems is that we live in a society in which money is considered to be the most valuable thing. If you have more money you must be a better and happier person (not always the case though). So you have to study something that can let you make lots of money. In addition to this, employers place an over-high value on a degree. Unfortunatley, anyone with the money seems to be able to get a degree so the degree is really worthless. The degree says nothing about how you performed in school and so a C student and an A student are considered equal in the employers eyes (as all they see is the degree). I would like to see a system in which tuition is cheap or free, competitiion for spots is high, and where the degree actually means something. Personally, I find that even though I pay for my tuition (through loans) that my motivation is still low. Why? Because I am more motivated by learning and if I'm taking a class that doesn't make me think or explore new ideas then I don't feel motivated by it. I don't care about my marks either, I care about what I got out of the class. Funding needs to be increased in order to provide greater quality teaching. As a final example of the current system, I study in a small department. In my second year I was feeling un-motivated by one of my classes because I felt that I wasn't getting much out of the class so I didn't go to it as often and I didn't do the work. But, the prof knew that I wanted to go on studying in that department. Because of the very small size of the department (4 profs, 8 students in my main 3rd year course) he couldn't fail me. He had every right to do so as I hadn't completed the work but since I wanted to go on he had to give me the minimum mark required to continue. This situation isn't that uncommon and only cheats students and professors. The prof in question was also very young and that was his 2nd year of teaching. He grew increasingly disillusioned over the term as he saw how the system was cheating him and the students. Thanks for letting me get all of this out! Great page! Keep up the fight!



-- anonymous anonymous, July 23, 1998

Three cheers for Phil. The fact is, private college education, particularly as it is practiced by the grand ivy pooh bahs and their brethren is a gigantic exercise in income redistribution. That which the folks who write federal and state tax policy have not been able to do, the nice people cited in Phil's POV have accomplished. It's astounding to think that tax payers who squak so intensely about paying taxes and the intrusiveness of various government agencies comply so willingly with the nearly identifcal ministrations of the bean counters at the great institutions of private learning? Here's the slammer. Take a look sometime at the size of the endowment at places like Harvard (which is the most egregious). What is all that money for? Then look at the amount of money that is paid out. It's generally about the same as the yield on a treasury certificate which is considerably less than the internal rate of return on their well managed portfolio. The fact is, the entire student body could attend for free just based on investment portfolio performance over the last ten years. Does that mean tuition should be free? No. Does that mean there should be a more rational view of educational pricing? I think Phil has advanced an argument in favor of that. Will anything change? Eventually I think it will for two reasons: 1) The next economic downturn. 2) The internet which will marginalize bricks and mortar in the hallowed halls of academia just as it has in banking and any other dozen segments of the economy you care to name.



-- Kevin Hoffberg, August 15, 1998

When I was fired as a university administrator for trying to catch an embezzler, I decided that I wasn't able to survive on instinct, so I needed some intellectual strategies. Using my education (BS MIT VIII'50, MA PhD Columbia) I invented a science of human behavior. It is on the web at http://surf.to/2000. I think that a tuition-free MIT is irrelevant because it will just reduce the spiritual power (or "mana") of MIT in a world that bases status on money. The internet will lead us into a world Norbert Wiener described where the only ones who will be allowed to work will be those who can do something better than a robot or computer. This will create an elite "working class" and a "liesure class" that will be supplied with whatever satisfies their needs as long as they keep themselves occupied and quiet. Tuition will be, like selling food and shelter, an obsolete concept.



-- Karl Eklund, August 18, 1998

Does MIT offer something that, for example, UMASS doesn't offer for undergrade engineering? In 1976 I asked just that question, and decided the answer was "no". The course offerings were identical. Over the years, I've worked for Purdue (a state school), Harvard, and UPenn, and have concluded that I was right. UMass should have the edge with size. On the other hand, WPI (private engineering school in Worcester) offered pass/fail courses, independent study and required projects. WPI wasn't (and isn't) cheap, but IMHO, was worth it. Despite excellence, WPI had to constantly fight to retain accredidation. Some departments (EE in particular) found ways to teach by the old rules. The status quo can be an ugly Goliath, even to an institution sized David. It goes without saying that the web-student must be self-motivated. Self-motivation may be helped if there is a carrot at the end of the tunnel. (for some, maybe not). Traditional exams are very poor at testing ability and skill. That means the accredidation problem continues. It's worse for anything new than for the status quo, since anything new must prove that it is superior to the status quo, whereas the status quo must only prove that it is the status quo.



-- Stephen Uitti, September 28, 1998

Your first few paragraphs - describing how Universities charge for tuition - look remarkably like your description of how Database Vendors charge for their software. Hmmm .



-- Steve Buxton, November 24, 1998

I come from a Third World country and can't help but get excited from your comment about hoping some day a high school girl in Vietnam can attend all the MIT classes she wants through the NET. The idea in my opinion is about as radical as Karl Marx's ideas and would generate similar monumental changes in our century. Historically, "have" nations have been able to dominate and overcome "have nots" and continue to do so because of more advanced technology i.e. gun powder, superior metallurgy etc. I have to thank people of conscience like yourself who can see class inequities and have resisted being swallowed up in a highly competitive society where the measure of your worth is the amount of dollars you can extract. I pray that you and other pioneers of the NET will be successful in your noble quest and that mankind in the next century will be the better for it.



-- Jack Congson, December 11, 1998

A free MIT. Very interesting. I'll bet if tuition were free the caliber of the student body would improve dramatically. A replacement for the lost tuition income could come from a semester of the third undergraduate year devoted to inventing. The university would patent the inventions, license them to business and share the income with the student. I will also bet the patent income will over time exceed the lost tuition.



-- Chris Doner, December 21, 1998

Phil's article struck a nerve. I went to Harvard as a freshman (on one of the few merit scholarships available in 1982) but dropped out after a year when the scholarship ended. I wasn't eligible for financial aid because my mother, who had made poverty-level wages the year before, maintained a savings account (she works in an industry where year-long unemployment was fairly common, so she set aside savings for lean years). It turned out that the financial aid algorithms required exhausting all savings before a student becomes eligible for any significant aid. I knew people at Harvard who were getting more financial aid than I was offered whose families had yachts and vacation homes. Apparently these don't count against financial aid the way a savings account does. All the private schools used the same algorithm for aid calculation. I dropped out, worked for a year and ended up at UCSC, from which I eventually graduated (paying most of my own way with some help from family). Now that I'm making good money, I send UCSC donations every year, earmarked for student scholarships and library books (no alumni wine-tasting parties). Harvard still sends me financial aid pleas, which go into the recycler. I was rude to them on the telephone because they kept pestering me for money, and told them why I wouldn't contribute; finally they got the message and stopped calling. I hope Phil's vision of college courses on the web comes to pass. It would also solve the continuing education problem, for adults who want to take advanced college courses but can't afford the time or tuition to enroll in a graduate degree program.



-- Akkana Peck, December 31, 1998

The idea of free universities in the USA is enticing, since our economy is presumably doing so well. The one free-university I know about is one I visited frequently last summer: Universidad Central (UCV) in Caracas, Venezuela. While I met many wonderfully idealistic and thoughtful students, the physical infrastructure and faculty of UCV have serious problems, in part due to a grave lack of money for salaries and maintenence that is related to the economic disaster of the country. Though it is plausible that the nations corporations will eventually pick up the slack, as has been proposed in an article in Business Venezuela, one of the nation's premiere business magazines, I shudder at the thought of making corporations that involved, since they have only one major reason for educating anyone: to develop a large supply of effective workers for their industries who posses technical skills. They are not likely to value the liberal, humanistic education that universities have traditionally stood for. I think it dangerous to let the private sector's money contaminate the interests of higher education in our country more than it has already.



-- Mike McVey, January 4, 1999

While I agree almost completely with Phil's opinions on tuition, the chief reason I am stepping up to speak is to applaud his ability to create this display of both intellegence and concern from the mass of stupidity that abounds on the internet. I have just discovered this web site and am amazed at the quality of content. It makes the "Favorites" on my browser appropriate. Thank you Phil for the forum and thank you participants for your comments.



-- Joel Londenberg, January 27, 1999

The return on investment for an engineer attending MIT or any other expensive school is poor. While starting salaries may look reasonable ($40K-$50K), the salary compression is such that salaries after 15 years are barely over $70K in the corporate world. Simple financial calculations (NPV) will show that is is not a good way to invest $150,000, especially at a cost of 10-11% interest. As Phil says, this leads to many engineers leaving their profession for more lucrative fields. As an alternative, most large corporations will pay today for your undergraduate and graduate education. The typical requirement is that you earn a C or B in a class to get reimbursed. ( The downside is that you must do this while working and most universties look down on working engineers, especially at the graduate level. Most professors prefer full-time foreign indentured grad students who fawn at their feet and work endess hours on the professors pet projects. Add to this the fact that many engineering professors are picked from this internal group so that many engineering courses lack any relevance to the real world. For this reason, at least in information/computer systems, college degrees have little correlation with rates.) A better investment for a high school student interested in a good practice as a engineer is to get an associates degree from the local community college (where course are usually taught by Phds in small classes as opposed to non-english speaking grad students teaching 5000 student classes). At the same time the student should get a basic certification such as Microsoft or Cisco. At this point, he/she should apply for a job as an engineering aide at a large corporation and immediately enroll for BSc to complete his/her education at company expense. Additional industry certifications such as Cisco's CCIE will lead to salaries in the $125K-$150K arena after the engineer leaves the corporate fold and consults or works for a small startup firm. Total investment on part of the student is probably several thousand dollars as opposed to several hundred thousand.. - Jamie Ross MIT '79



-- Jamie Ross, February 1, 1999

here are a few random points; 1) the discussion concerning the motivational level of paying students versus "free ride" students is interesting, but I don't think you can come to a conclusion without looking at external factors. one is the effect of the inherently hostile university environment; I suspect that the "free riders", particularly those on scholarships, have gotten used to good treatment by the various schools up to college. the pay-as-you-go crowd, not having been accorded any respect during middle and high school, may be better prepared emotionally for the slings and arrows of outrageous academia. another factor is the end result of those hard years; for Europeans in particular, I have read that post-graduate success has more to do with socio-economic status than academic performance, so why kill yourself studying? 2) I find it increasingly ironic that, as the American economy becomes faster-paced and more competitive, that 17-year-olds are expected to have their future mapped out, and have the self-discipline and motivation to pursue that future with all guns blazing (metaphors mixed while-u-wait!). 3) the Utopians would like everything to be merit-based, while the Free-Marketeers would like competition to provide efficiency. both mean well, and both will be disappointed. the problem is a complex one related to scale. if less expensive schools provided the same education, and employers had the ability to accurately gauge future value of prospective employees, then the wise college freshman would choose the cheaper school. real life doesn't work that way. large organizations have a management structure (thus implementing the Peter Principle) and usually a dedicated Human Resources department (a set of folks for whom lobotomies would be redundant). both groups of people are often willing to pay a dollar premium for the prestige degree. also, work assignments and advancement opportunities are more likely available to the best pedigree. so, there are incentives in the U.S. for students to pay the massive premium charged by MIT. and if they're willing to pay, any university _will_ charge it. universities are about money, after all. no matter what is done, I am not sure that there is a solution to this problem, unless you find a way to address the external issues. its sort of a symptom of greater societal ills. there are trainloads of related rants which partly feed into this issue, but I'll sign off for now. for the prestige



-- Wilfred of Ivanhoe, February 11, 1999

As I read Philip's argument, it struck me how much his vision of a tuition free school matched the reality at Cooper Union. I know that the reference is redundant, since it's been previously mentioned, but the Cooper is really unique. The school isn't perfect, but it doesn't force students to waste time and effort running some sort of financial gauntlet before granting them an affordable education. Oh, by the way, Cooper also offers free education in the fields of art and architecture. It's not just an engineering school.



-- Frank Wortner, March 18, 1999

Back in the 1950s and 60s, many Americans did get a free education thanks to the GI bill, and there were even more tuition-free schools than there are today. Student loans were unheard of. Back then, the view was that society is investing in you to do something important that will benefit everybody. Today, the view is that since you are the main beneficiary of your education, why shouldn't you pay for it? When we send that message to students, I don't think we can blame them for pursuing high pay over fulfillment and public service. It's hard for me to say what parents should pay since mine were asked and able to pay very little, but burdening 21 year olds with thousands of dollars in debt doesn't seem like the best start MIT could give to young careers. I think the real question is who pays for education and what does that payment represent? Is it the older generation investing in the younger generation, or is each generation on its own? Is it the whole society making the investment in its future, or does it just work one family at a time? Whose interests is MIT supposed to be serving and how are they best served?



-- Delete Me, March 27, 1999

your responses inspired me to take a look at our academia over the last two centuries. two hundred years ago we were an agrarian economy. University was for the well born and based on the English model. one hundred years ago we were an industrial economy. University was for the well born and based on the German model(as it is today). fifty years ago we were a scientific economy. in response to the communist challenge we became more egalitarian. University was for everyone. today we are an information economy. in response to the communist collapse we reverted to earlier times. University was for the well born(and its now necessary hirelings). in a class system the price of admission/tuition is necessarily high. if the upper echelons of government/academia/corporations form this class,what can we expect in the future? more consolidation, more monopoly, less free distribution of information, less change. the Web is new and upstart, it will be the first to feel the pinch. you'll still be able to distribute flyers on the street corners as you did before but - you'll see more server based solutions(no more just looking at View Source to see how it's done), a more snazzy and expensive(in time and money, talent and knowledge) look to discourage entry, and more proprietary solutions discouraging mass communication(till these are erased by consolidation). reading this over, i find it inexorably and depressingly negative. still, there's always the possiblility of a "beau geste", a beautiful gesture, even if it doesn't inspire others to slack their fees. and also, what the hell, i might be wrong.



-- david sugarman, April 10, 1999

I think it's noteworthy to mention that what's being proposed here is not free education. It is education being paid for by the companies that will benefit from that education a few years down the road. I can see that students could be less motivated if it's something they don't have to pay for but the trick there is to admit students that want to learn and want to succeed and to get rid of the students that obviously have no interest in it. I find, in my life, that the biggest obstruction to me pursuing my ideas is money. If we can remove that obstruction and attract students with great ideas from all financial backgrounds we can put out better quality graduates which in turn gives the educational institution a better name and attracts more investors.



-- David Walker, April 12, 1999

I beleive your ideas are excellent. I am about to become an undergraduate at NJIT where I will be studying computer technology. I've been told by several people that I should look into MIT, that I could get loans and grants since I've been in the military for four years. I've thought about it but came to the decision that I would much rather not get into the debt(whether I qualify or not is a different story). I also know a few other people that would love to attend MIT, and that are highly qualified to attend, but just can not afford it. I'm sure that society would benifit by affording the finacially average the ability to attend MIT.

I don't know that the price/education ratio is worth it at present. Much undergraduate learning is done on your own, or in groups of peers working on projects. I wonder if $100,000+ for guided study is worth it? I've taught myself web database programming in the past few years while I've been in the military. I'm not an expert in the field, and I'm sure I could learn a lot from an experienced programmer, but I don't feel I would be willing to pay $100,000+ for this experience.

I wish you the best of luck in your cause, and would be willing to help in any way I can. Thank You.



-- Stephen Walker, April 17, 1999

I just wondered how come tuition can cost $100,000 a year and yet there are no RDBMS servers. Surely machines cost very little and (some) RDBMS cost nothing. In Britain (where I live) some universities have started thinking about charging tuition. At the moment all fees are paid by the govt from tax. The charge they're thinking of is about $1500 a year and half the country is outraged. Some bright spark in the National Union of Students calculated the actual cost of some popular courses and got together a poster campaign with the strapline "is your degree worth #20,000 to you?" Of course we were supposed to say 'hell no, down with tuition fees'. I thought 'if it's not worth that to you should it be worth it to me as a taxpayer?' I haven't read to the end of the article yet so i don't know if Phil has an idea for a sustainable fee-free MIT, but extremely wealthy lecturers handing back the fees is a great anarchic strike. In Britain some lecturers don't earn $20,000 a year. But that's in arts/humanities.



-- A We, April 20, 1999

Excellent argument. Allow me to relate my current situation; I think it will serve as a useful corollary to the above. I am an MIT freshman who is currently faced with a rather disturbing dilemma. I have the opportunity of taking a research position at the Media Lab, which would provide me a fairly large degree of freedom as well as combining two areas of computer science which I have a great deal of interest in. Competing with this offer is a position at a commercial software company, offering somewhat less desirable circumstances from an intellectual perspective. Based simply on the merits of the work involved, I would most likely decide on the Media Lab. The commercial software company, however, has offered me a full five times the maximum salary the Media Lab is allowed to pay me, not including overtime and other material benefits. (The Media Lab is only allowed to pay undergrads for 40 hours/week of work. As anyone in computer science knows, this is a ridiculously light workload for a developer). Unfortunately, I have a bill for $16000 arriving this Fall, followed by another in the Spring.

...

I am certain I'm not the only undergraduate faced with such a difficult decision. In fact, I'm certain I'm not the only undergraduate who would choose the research position were they not faced with an enormous amount of debt. MIT is built on people Just Like Me in that respect. In fact, that's at least part of the reason why they wanted us in the first place. If research grants are indeed such a large portion of MIT's income, then perhaps encouraging more undergrads to do research at MIT would be somewhat beneficial to The Institvte financially, to say nothing of its reputation as an intellectual institution. Will I stay at MIT for the remainder of my undergrad career?

Probably.

Will I be as beneficial to MIT as I could be were I not burdened with the prospect of a debt larger than the lifetime incomes of 75% of the world's population?

Probably not.





-- Aaron Bornstein, April 23, 1999

Ok, I've been writing a term-long paper about Tuition at MIT for 17.241 [Introduction to the American Political Process]. I've analyzed where the costs of tuition go, the fact that tuition alone could only pay 14% of mit's operating costs, trends in tuition increase, the Ivy Overlap cartel, the process by which tuition is decided at mit, and a host of other issues. The administrators I've talked to firmly believe (or, have sufficiently deluded themselves) that the process of Overlap -- the standardization of financial aid given to each student -- was in the correct interests of the students. The fact that finaid is need-blind means that especially desirable students don't get obscene amounts of cash... cash that could better be used to help truly needy students. Also, your discussion hasn't mentioned the amount of financial aid that an average mit student gets; only 10%-20% pay the full cost of tuition out of pocket. For the thesis of my final paper, I'm arguing that, if mit were so inclined, they could offer tuition-free education to their undergraduate students. And then I'm arguing why this will never happen. Other potentially disasterous side-effects include: decrease in student influence over the adminstration (not that they have much of that to begin with), a drastic increase in the number of applicants, and the effect of "people that won't ever leave mit" (which could be restricted by only making the first four years free).



-- Tresi Arvizo, May 7, 1999

How about: cut tuition in half. Pass along tuition costs to the end-user which, in a sense, is not the student but the corporation that ultimately hires her upon graduation. Ie., make MIT a headhunter. MIT and other top schools could collude in a positive way (instead of on tuition and financial aid) -- charging commissions to employers. Students still can work for whomever they choose upon graduation, but they pay half tuition in exchange for agreeing to "register" their jobs, allowing MIT to charge its commission. There would be a number of loopholes to close, but do-able, I think. For example, any student caught violating the terms of the agreement would immediately be presented for a bill of the entire four-year cost of schooling. Any company making an end-run on the process would be suspended from hiring MIT grads -- any future hires would be immediately subjected to the present-student-will-full-bill treatment. Let's say MIT charges a commission over the first 3 years -- 12%, 10%, 8%. So Joe works for Sun for 3 years out of college -- earns $200K in toto. MIT gets reimbursed $60,000. You get the drift. Companies already pay huge headhunter fees. Why not tap into that? They write off those expenses anyway. And it scales financial aid not exclusively to how much your parents had, but to how much you make down the road.



-- michael goldstein, July 11, 1999

Firstly let me state I'm not here to get anyone to pity me. I am currently living in Denmark, and have been here 6 months and am here becuase my father was offered a tenured position at a university here. I have moved (not traveled as most people think, I am a modern day nomad, I move to survive, don't have time to enjoy the sights, just time to try and fit into the new system, which has never happened to this day, once an alien, always an alien) from one country to another since a child (3 years in England, 6 years in Singapore, 1 year in the U.S.A, 6 months in Denmark list goes on.) I am now "stuck" in Denmark, where it will take me at least 10 years to complete a undergrad Computer Science degree (it's very hard to explain, but simply put the Danish system is very open to non Danish/EU citizens). The resources available here are also very limited (and bloody expensive, income tax ranges from 45-60%, all goods and services have a tax on them ranging from 25%-250%, computer goods for example cost 150%-250% more than what one would pay in U.S.A, I can't even afford to buy a cycle, let alone a new computer to replace my older system). All this said, I plan to go to the U.S.A. and study, the resources are available there, there is a very large and healthy computer/geek community in which I would feel at home with. There are many more reasons as to why I chose the U.S.A., but there is one main problem in studying in the U.S.A, the costs. I am considered an international student, which means I must pay a LOT more money than U.S. citizens. I would love to go and study at M.I.T. My father had a reseach position at M.I.T. and I got a chance to go around and get a feel for the environment and I would love to be part of it. I have however not put M.I.T. on my the list of possible universities I might attend, one reason being that I won't pass their entrance requirements (I am no straight A, Albert Einstein), and second I would never be able to afford the costs. I have 2 universities in mind at current, both in MA, one being public, one being privte, I am going to with-hold their names. I am more inclined on attending the private univeristy, as it seems to have better resources and a better computer science department. My cost calculations for a 5 year undergrad Computer Science course are in total close to US$200,000. They don't charge as much as say Harvard or M.I.T. would, but that is still a LOT of money. The only way I will be able to attend this university is if I obtain a loan from a U.S., WITH a U.S. citizen co-signer, how I will find a U.S. Citizec co-signer, I have no clue. That is just one of the problems I am going to face, it will leave me in debt for the next 20-25 years of my life, I have many other things to worry about, getting past my father, who shows no interest in my future or future goals and will not help with anything, getting a student visa and proving I have the money to support myself for the 5 years in the U.S. and there are many more problems. I am 20 years old, and I have big plans on what I want to do. I have a GREAT deal of interest in computers and computer technology, I can't even begin to explain how important it all is to me, my life depends on it, it's the only thing I'm good at, and actually enjoy. What I really want to say is that I very much admire what you (Philip Greenspun) are doing, I must admit it seems like and impossible task, but I wish you the best with it, and I would like to add, that if I ever have the facility to help you out, I will do so to whatever extent I can, that is if, I ever make it. Truthfully, it doesn't seem like I will, I will probably stuck in Denmark for the rest of my life delivering newspapers for 6-8 hours a day (my current job, the only job I can get here, because I am non Danish/EU). I would like to end this message by saying thank you to you Mr. Greenspun, even though your goal does not benefit me directly in any way, the general gist of your goal is to help people like me, and for that, I thank you. SeVeN P.S. Please pardon any grammar/spelling mistakes, it's 5:30AM in the morning, I am tired, and I don't have time to check my message, as I have to leave for my paper rounds now.



-- Shoaib Saleemi, July 11, 1999

It's amazing that an institution like MIT and other Ivy League universities charge an individual 1/4 million dollars for an education. While at the same time declare that they feel they are contributing because they 'offer' affordable schooling. For those who have never had to prostrate themselves in front of university administration; let me tell you; its demeaning. They request information about you, your parents (so they too can feel shamed), any other family members whom may be with-in a call or two. They dont give the money; they only drive home the fact that you cant afford their schooling. After they have had their way with you then they decide what you can and can not afford. This in itself is a higher education. It teaches you, those who do not drive new cars or wear expensive jewelry, are only welcome if the administration allows it. It sends out a clear and strong message: You are welcome shown you can afford it. I did all this for $1700.00 Canadian. I dont think I could image what $250,000.00 US would feel like. Keep up the good work. You may not change the American education institute, but you could make a significant impact on the Canadian educational system.



-- Mike Glover, August 9, 1999

Philip, I've been thinking about your argument since I first saw the news of your gesture last year (okay, I started thinking about it after I stopped cursing myself for not attending your lecture :). My concern with replacing tuition dollars with commercial or otherwise private dollars is that it may promote an even more intense level of careerism and less breadth and exploration among our undergraduates. Interacting with undergraduates in various engineering programs at MIT, I've already been dismayed at the generally increasing career focus of freshmen and sophomores. Some may consider it increased market saavy, but I think it's sad to find students who never explore or consider fields other than the one they come in believing holds the best monetary return. There are still lots of neat people who come to MIT, but I think many have noticed the shift in the outlook of many within our incoming class. Even worse could be the impact on electives in the humanities. I'd hate to see Playwrighting (which, by the way, taught me more about understanding and working with people than any other class at MIT) replaced with Business English and Communciations. What chance does MIT really have of resisting commercial forces? MIT already tends to follow the current vogues of the commercial world in several areas, rather than setting the pace. In graduate work, you can already see the not-so-subtle differences between grant-funded and commercial contract research. I guess the earlier question should be whether private funders would try to change MIT curriculum or not. I think it's likely, it's natural to want some control over your investment, even when investing in an engineer-factory like MIT. Given the popularity of the field, wouldn't the first reasonable thing to do be to hire some management consultants to review the undergraduate curricula? What might the findings be and what might the companies ask MIT to do in return for their dollars? I'm exaggerating and oversimplying to illustrate a point, but I think it's an important consideration in making a place like MIT tuition-free. I chose materials science after starting in computer science because I found it more difficult, frustrating, and anti-intuitive, hence interesting and challenging, for me at the time (you can't pay for that kind of masochism)...I would never have done that with a capitalistic career bent, especially since CS/EE salaries look like medical doctor salaries to us poor groveling physical scientists. Not that our curricula are perfect, but I think the pressure to turn out "the kind of engineers that industry wants" is already large and corrupting enough as it stands. In any case, I'd be interested in any further discussion of whether people believe the influences I describe would really occur and whether they could be thwarted in the tuition-free MIT nirvana that Philip proposes.



-- Andrew Kim, August 14, 1999

When I graduated from high school, I was accepted at