Stanford University announced on Wednesday that it was eliminating tuition for students whose families have annual incomes of less than $45,000, the San Francisco Chronicle reported this morning. In giving such a major tuition break to students from the neediest families, Stanford is joining a group of affluent private and public universities that, in recent years, have sought to soften the burden of their rising tuition rates for students from low-income families.

Last week the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said it would match its students’ Pell Grants, dollar for dollar, to help defray the cost of tuition (The Chronicle, March 7). Last month the University of Minnesota announced a similar offer (The Chronicle, February 13). They followed announcements in recent years by, among others, the University of Virginia (The Chronicle, January 18, 2005), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (The Chronicle, October 2, 2003), Yale University (The Chronicle, September 6, 2001), and Princeton University (The Chronicle, February 16, 2001).