But that ignores the fact that Princeton is contributing to an inflated college price market. One might think that every extra dollar counts, and if families can pay, they should. If you think the wealthy need to contribute more to society, that money should be paid in taxes which benefit the average American, not tuition to elite colleges. Even if every dollar in tuition was put to great use at Princeton or Harvard, which it obviously isn’t, that money is benefitting Princeton and Harvard students who already have extraordinary advantages just from attending. If Princeton is able to be perfectly price discriminatory and fleece the rich for every last cent they could pay, why shouldn’t it? In The Harvard Crimson, Editorial Editor Joel Sabando argued that Harvard’s tuition should be much higher: up to $1 million so that the ultra-wealthy pay the same proportion of their income as any other Harvard student.īut viewing tuition at ultra-elite colleges as a method of economic justice is missing the forest for the trees. Now, the most obvious argument against eliminating tuition is that eliminating tuition would be a massive giveaway to the richest families on campus. We pay tuition out of a sense of tradition more than anything else. That means Princeton could have cut all student fees campus-wide while still having a budget surplus of about $200 million. The total amount raised by tuition and fees, just more than $100 million, is less than the more than $300 million surplus that Princeton ran in 2021. In 2021, net tuition and fees - that is, student payments minus student aid - came out to a grand total of just under five percent of the University’s operating revenue. Students may already be aware that the University doesn’t rely primarily on tuition to fund its operations, but the numbers are staggering. Tuition is completely unnecessary to university finances and by keeping its sticker price high, Princeton contributes to tuition inflation across the country where aid is not so plentiful. But increasing aid is not enough - Princeton needs to take steps to drastically reduce its sticker price, if not eliminate tuition altogether. Increasing student aid is one of the better uses of the University’s recent financial gains, second only to expanding the student body (which Princeton is also doing). Earlier this morning, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced an enormous increase in student financial aid.
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