Will MSU match Michigan's tuition offer?

RJ Wolcott | Lansing State Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Free tuition from University of Michigan? It's happening The University of Michigan will offer free tuition to in-state students whose families make under $65,000 a year.

EAST LANSING - The University of Michigan made headlines when it announced a plan to cover tuition costs for in-state students whose families make less than $65,000 per year.

It's called the Go Blue Guarantee, and it officially begins in January.

Going into Wednesday’s Michigan State University Board of Trustees meeting, the question was: Would MSU respond with a Go Green Guarantee?

It didn't, as it turned out.

But MSU President Lou Anna Simon says the university has had something similar in place for eight years already.

“They modeled their program after our Spartan Advantage,” Simon said following the meeting. “They just have a little bit of benefit of socioeconomic class that we do not.”

And that benefit makes a difference.

Spartan Advantage is focused on students whose family incomes fall at or below federal poverty line, which is $24,600 annually for a family of four.

U-M's program drew attention, in part, because it would apply to the majority of Michigan households. The state's median household income was $51,084 in 2015, according to census figures.

Spartan Advantage covered tuition, the cost of room and board, books and other expenses for more than 2,200 Spartans in the last academic year, according to MSU’s Office of Financial Aid.

Spartan Advantage and MSU's other financial aid decisions have produced "the kind of debt performance...that suggests we are committed to Michigan families," Simon said.

Setting the financial bar as high as U-M did isn’t so simple, Simon said, because two schools' student bodies look very different economically.

“It would be difficult for us to give no tuition to half of our student body,” she said.

It would be more like a quarter of the student body, according to a study conducted for The Equality of Opportunity Project.

More than 24% of MSU students come from families making $65,000 or less, the study said. Not quite 3% are from families that make $630,000 or more, the top 1%.

At U-M, 16.5% of students come from families earning $65,000 a year or less, the bottom 60% of the income scale. More than 9% come from families in the top 1%.

Related

MSU tuition to go up again this fall

MSU trustee: 'I deeply regret' naming whistleblower in sex assault case

Brian Mosallam, an MSU trustee, also pointed out that U-M brings in a greater proportion of out-of-state students, who pay significantly more in tuition than in-state students.

Roughly 72% of MSU’s students last year live in Michigan, compared to 52% at the University of Michigan.

That, in turn, means U-M has more money around to offer the Go Blue Guarantee, Mosallam said.

Among students who receive federal financial aid, Wolverines were already paying less on average than Spartans, despite a higher sticker price at U-M.

For instance, at U-M, freshmen whose families earned between $30,001 and $48,000 paid a net price of $6,561 during the 2014-15 school year. That takes in the cost of tuition, room and board and other fees minus grant aid.

Their counterparts in East Lansing paid $11,872, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Michigan State doled out $34 million in grants or scholarships to 3,553 students that year. U-M gave $41 million to 3,030 students, federal data shows.

For Dan Hurley, CEO of the Michigan Association of State Universities, U-M made an important gesture toward low-income families with its announcement.

“This program contributes to a growing effort nationally to communicate to families in a very conscious manner that access to public higher education is achievable,” he said.

Asked about the chance of other public universities following U-M’s example, Hurley said his organization’s members are already making investments for their low-income students.

The University of Michigan is also uniquely equipped to make this kind of gesture, according to Hurley.

“Being the oldest university in the state and a globally recognized institution puts (U-M) in a better position to put forward a program like this as compared to rest of Michigan’s public universities.”

Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.