As Stanford has improved its financial aid program to make the Farm more accessible for students from all economic backgrounds, I’ve cheered. I would have benefited had this new plan been in place during my years at Stanford, so my only qualm is that it isn’t retroactive. A rebate check would’ve been nice.
Like most alumni, I lost interest in the particulars of financial aid the minute I strolled into Stanford Stadium on graduation day. That changed a year ago when my wife gave birth to our first child, Nola. Her wonderfully inquisitive eyes seem to beam aspirations for a PhD, and my interest in college financing has grown along with her shoe size.
Stanford’s new program uses need-based scholarships and grants to eliminate the entire parental contribution for tuition, room and board, and other expenses for families with a total annual income under $60,000; and it ensures that tuition cost is covered for families making less than $100,000. The program applies only to families with “typical assets,” so for parents who own a fleet of platinum-plated jets, different rules apply. The University still requires students to cover a portion of their expenses—about $4,500 annually—with money earned from part-time work during the school year and summer employment.
That’s exactly how it should be. Students should have to pick up part of the tab for their education. No other investment benefits a person more fully in every aspect of their life. I left Stanford with $20,000 in student-loan debt, but the experience gained has far outweighed the money owed. At that price, I feel like a thief, and not because a Stanford Basketball chair found its way into the trunk of my car the day after graduation.
My complaint with the old system was not that it required me to finance part of my education, but rather that it required my mom to pay a significant portion of the cost. Given her limited means, the system was unjust. It was my education, not hers. Yet in order for me to attend Stanford, she had to take out a sizeable mortgage.
When my father died of a heart attack prior to my freshman year of high school, my mom was left with a debt-free home and four kids who planned to attend college. The debt-free house was not an accident: my father had a history of heart trouble, so the equity in our home substituted for the life insurance no one would sell him. Our house was both a place to live and my mother’s safety net. After Dad died, Mom went back to work as a schoolteacher, raking in $17,000 a year. In the decade that followed, the four of us went off to college, one by one. With each departure a financial aid offer arrived that essentially read, “Mrs. Kemper: Although you have no liquid assets to speak of, you own a $200,000 house free and clear! That’s great! Now give us a part of it.”
Mom dutifully complied. Four times she mortgaged her home to pay for our educations. Our family jokes that our kitchen went to Eastern Oregon State, the bedrooms attended the University of Puget Sound, the living room went to Stanford, and the family room visited pretty much every institution of higher learning west of the Rockies before finally graduating from Lewis & Clark. Mom has hung our four diplomas throughout the house accordingly.
A couple years after I graduated from Stanford, I decided to attend law school. When I shared my decision with my mother, she asked, in a very supportive tone, “Why?”
“Because I didn’t pay much attention during undergrad and I feel like it’s time to learn something.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “But you owe me a living room.”
And I do. There is no reason she should’ve had to pay for my education with money she didn’t have.
Stanford’s current aid program makes certain that parents in my mom’s situation won’t have to dip into a limited nest egg to usher their child out of the nest. It also means that if my daughter has the opportunity to attend Stanford, we’ll be able to afford it: I’ve been wildly successful at keeping my assets typical.
CHRISTOPHER J. KEMPER, ’91, is a writer and adventurer based in Portland, Ore.
