This is very cool. The prestigious Deerfield Academy, located in the historic village of Deerfield, Massachusetts (the home of the 1704 Indian raid made famous by John Demos’s book The Unredeemed Captive ), is offering free tuition and boarding to families who earn up to $150,000 a year.
Here is Sam Hudzik at New England Public Media:
A top prep school in western Massachusetts will offer free tuition and fees, including boarding costs, to admitted U.S. students whose families earn up to $150,000 a year.
Deerfield Academy Head of School John Austin said this announcement comes with a 6% boost to the school’s financial aid budget.
“The way in which we’re framing it for families now, we hope will be more transparent and clearer, so that they’ll have a better sense of of what Deerfield might cost,” Austin said. “And hopefully, that’ll be more inviting to a broader range of kids from … different walks of life.”
For families making more than $150,000 a year, Austin said the school will not charge them more than 10% of that income.
“There are a lot of families who just look at the price tag of an independent school education … and they just say to themselves, ‘Well, I can’t possibly afford that,'” he said. “And so, we really wanted to … reframe the cost of an education so that it’s just more inviting to families. And they don’t assume based on sticker price that a school like Deerfield is completely beyond their reach.”
The price next school year for tuition, fees, room and board for a student who lives on campus is $74,440. The cost for a “day” student is $53,860.
Read the rest here.