Dec. 7 – St. John’s College has taken another step toward making the state’s only private liberal arts campus more affordable, with a focus on attracting more New Mexico residents.
The Annapolis- and Santa Fe-based college announced last month that it would at least guarantee free college education for domestic students from families earning less than $75,000 annually through a combination of federal and institutional grants.
While the guarantee does not necessarily include housing and food, students can stack other financial aid offers — whether merit-based scholarships or need-based aid — to cover such costs.
“It’s intended to make it very clear so that people applying to college know what to expect when they get their financial aid package,” said Benjamin Baum, vice president of enrollment at St. John’s, “and it is also We are using the $326 million we have raised in recent years as part of this campaign to make college increasingly affordable to a greater number of families.”
That campaign, which surpassed its original goal of raising $300 million, was called “Freeing Minds: A Campaign for St. John’s College” and was launched in 2018 as a way to shift the college from a tuition-based model to a philanthropy-based model. .
Following the announcement of the campaign, several affordability improvements followed:
* In 2019, the college said it would cut tuition by 33% — from $55,000 to $35,000 — reversing a decade of price increases.
* In 2020, it announced a pledge to match the funding students receive from federal Pell Grants. And for New Mexico residents, it guaranteed a special scholarship that brought tuition to a flat rate not to exceed $25,000 annually.
New Mexico students are at the center of the new initiative, which Baum said is a “new reframing of how we provide assistance to our students most in need.”
“We are a university that appeals to people from across the country and around the world,” he said, noting that the school also cares about people in its “hometowns” in New Mexico and Maryland.
That’s the idea, he said, behind initiatives like the $25,000 flat-rate tuition for New Mexicans and recruitment efforts at high schools across the state that try to get students interested in St. John’s unique approach to education.
“There is no giant lecture hall at St. John’s….Each class will be an engaging experience between about sixteen students around a table with one or two of our faculty members,” he said.
Baum listed three cornerstones of St. John’s academic identity.
* Focus on the discussion in a small classroom.
* The Great Books curriculum, which brings students together to discuss authors of literary classics, from Jane Austen and WEB Du Bois to Plato and Aristotle.
* The interdisciplinary nature of a liberal arts education, where students seek connections between disciplines rather than being forced into one field.
“That’s something that I think a lot of New Mexico students really want,” Baum said, “and it’s our job to get out there and make sure that they know about this opportunity, know that it’s something is that they may want to do, but also something that is affordable for them.”
