What Powers the Most Generous Finaid: Tuition Receipts or Endowments?
Charging full-price can, in theory, help universities fund financial aid. Which universities draw the largest tuition pools from full-payers?
Top-50: Most Generous Financial Aid
Showing 2021-22 Avg Net Price data for families earning $0-$110k/yr (IPEDS)
One thought is that gigantic endowments must be powering the most-generous levels of financial aid, so below I’ve pulled the endowment sizes for all of the universities above:
Endowments Supporting the Most Generous Financial Aid
Showing 2022 Endowment Size reported to IPEDS (F2H02)
How interesting! Endowment clearly helps, but there are also universities with low net prices that have small endowments. The other obvious source of financing generous financial aid is tuition reciepts. Below I’ve pulled the tuition reciepts generated by full-price-paying students.
Tuition Receipts from Full-Payers
Showing 21-22 Tuition Reciepts from Full-Paying Students. Blanks mean university did not have full-paying students (and discounts all tuition)
There are clear trends above: the most generous funders of financial aid, like #1 Stanford, have both large endowments and large pools of tuition. But other models exist: Cooper Union (NYC), Millikin University (Decatur, Illinois), and Rust College (Holly Springs, MS) provision low net prices without either gigantic endowments or full-tuition payers.