High Tuition is a Vicious Cycle

One of the biggest complaints I hear about GW is the fact that our tuition is too high and I must admit 50,000+ a year is a high price to pay no matter what the school. However in a Wednesday night discussion at the Jack Morton Auditorium, President Knapp made a good point saying

Stanford's endowment is about 17 times the size as ours," Knapp said. "We give probably the same amount of financial aid, it's just that we don't take it out of our endowment. We're in this kind of cycle where we have to raise tuition to support student aid.

Its understanable that in order to give more scholarships, you have to charge students whose's family's are able to pay full price. But lets face it, they are fewer and fewer people who can pay full price for a school that costs 50,000 dollars.
Its very unfortunate that in order to keep costs down on the whole, some people have to pay more in tuition. GW is at a disadvantaged to schools like Harvard and Yale who with their large endowments can give larger aid packages. Having a smaller endowment than those schools in the Ivy League is not the fault of GW. The fact that Harvard and Yale can offer full tuition aid to families within certain income brackets is admirable and wonderful, but puts unfair pressure on schools with smaller endowments to match these aid packages, possibly raising the cost for student who don't qualify for financial aid.