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Friday, January 12, 2007
Emory’s Advantage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ll never forget the day my mom called me at college to tell me she’d been laid off from her job at Westinghouse thanks to the defense budget cutbacks in the late 1980s. It was just weeks into the first semester of my freshman year. Neither she nor I knew how we were going to pay for the next four years. I was convinced I would have to drop out.
Fortunately, my grandmother — a modest and frugal woman who reuses every plastic bag and container she comes across — stepped in and paid for nearly my entire degree out of her retirement savings. I left college with a diploma in hand and practically debt free.
Of course, many aren’t lucky enough to have a Grandma Rosie or other family member who can handle that cost, especially with the exorbitant price of college these days. The officials at Emory University, where tuition runs upwards of $32,000 annually, seem to have woken up to this.
They’ve developed a plan — the “Emory Advantage” — so fewer families, particularly those in the middle class, will be asked to carry the burden. From the looks of the program, described in Andrea Jones’ story, once word gets out, Emory could be flooded with applications.
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