I’m glad to see this return to the classic policies on this point, though we can hopefully avoid the rest of the founding principles–Rice was founded to provide free education to poor Texas white boys. (I attended in the late 80’s, with $5K tuition and $5K room and board, and this is literally how WM Rice’s intentions were always described, though I haven’t seen any primary sources.)
When I visited for my 20th reunion and heard about how high tuition had gotten, I was saddened since I knew there was no way my kids could afford to go, and I’d loved it there. This brings things back to something more like affordability, but my kids have turned out to have issues which mean they’re not going to be getting in regardless. C’est la vie.
One point that might not come across from the numbers here: those kids in the free-tuition-but-not-free-housing category might seem like they could just live off-campus and save a fair bit, but at Rice living on campus has always been the preferred state. When I was there, you had to live on campus one year, but pretty much everyone who could wanted to be there all four years; they’d guarantee you the right to be on campus for three years, and held lotteries to see who’d get to be there a fourth year. I suppose things could have changed, but it was a pretty fundamental part of student culture.
