Brown University will eliminate all tuition for students from families that earn less than $60,000 a year, following similar decisions by Dartmouth, Harvard University, Yale University and Stanford University, according to The New York Times. Brown will also replace student loans with grants, for students whose families earn less than $100,000 per year, and will reduce loan reliance in all students' financial aid packages, the university announced in a statement on Saturday. Brown simultaneously announced that it will increase its tuition by 3.9 percent for the 2008-2009 academic year. The new yearly total amounts to $47,740, including room and board costs. "Today, we take another major step forward to ensure that our nation's best students from lower- and middle-income families can attend Brown and graduate without the enormous burden of college debt," Ruth K. Simmons, Brown's president, told The Times.
Though the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University have drawn attention to crime on college campuses, a report released last week by the Bureau of Judicial Statistics found that campus crime rates have declined over the past 10 years, according to InsideHigherEd.com. The report found that violent crime rates dropped nine percent overall between 1994 and 2004, while property crime rates fell 30 percent. Crime rates were significantly higher at private institutions than at public ones, the report said. The report also revealed that public institutions are 51 percent more likely to hire armed law enforcement officers than private institutions. New York University had the largest security staff, with 345 members, while Howard University in Washington, D.C., employed the most full-time sworn officers, with 166. Yale University was the only member of the Ivy League to make the top 10 list of the most full-time officers, with 78.
