St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. has changed its policy on tuition and we at The Equinox are excited to hear about it.
The recent change at St. Anselm is quite significant. According to a Sept. 24 New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) article, students residing in N.H. that apply will no longer have to pay tuition if their families make less than $100,000 a year and have a grade point average (GPA) of 3.25 or higher. After rolling out this plan, this year’s class is the second largest in St. Anselm’s history, with 579 first-years and 48 transfer students coming to the college.
The move to limit the burdens on prospective college students is truly great and should be commended. However, it also shines a bright light on the inadequacies of the current college funding system in N.H. and America more broadly.
In a time where everything is getting more expensive, so are education costs, and this eliminates a possible barrier to achieving that education. Yet St. Anselm is a private college, so it has control over how it handles fiscal policy, whereas public schools such as Keene State College do not. N.H. public colleges and universities are precisely the schools that could benefit from actions like this, giving them a much needed boost in enrollment. Most unfortunately, N.H. has a bigger issue with state college funding too. N.H. is dead last when it comes to state funding for higher education, only contributing $3,699 per student according to New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.
We believe that while this is a good choice on the part of St. Anselm, the State of N.H. should make a similar move with tuition in the University System of New Hampshire (USNH). It would afford more opportunities to the young folks of N.H. and lessen the expenses of schooling. In a perfect world N.H. could very well extend that to all lower income students. Our only fear would be the system getting overwhelmed by people enrolling. A plan as ambitious as this one could require more stringent academic benchmarks.
We also feel there is a classist aspect to the current college tuition system in the U.S. as well. The current system of paying at the point of service is biased away from kids who grew up poor or lived in struggling neighborhoods. A lot of these children have struggled in classes and may not have the proper GPA for free tuition yet should still get a fair shake at college. This keeps the image of the American Dream and social mobility alive for future generations to come.
Hopefully in the near future N.H. public college tuitions can get a revamping like that of St. Anselm’s. It would greatly benefit the state, students and the community supporters; the increase could motivate people to want to move to the state after college. More importantly, if the state were to follow in St. Anselm’s footsteps, it would give a chance at social mobility to folks that would otherwise not hate the chance.
