by
Chair
Stanford Board of Trustees
The future presents today's college students with major challenges: reconciling economic development with environmental concerns; infusing technological pursuits with values; caring for the health of one generation without bankrupting another. The list goes on.
Institutions like Stanford are committed to helping students meet these challenges by developing critical thinking skills. As President Gerhard Casper has argued, universities must teach clear reasoning and critical thinking to aid decision-making when facts are unsure, precedent unavailable, and good judgment the best guidepost.
In this annual report, we attempt to address questions of the present that Americans have raised through, for instance, the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. In “Demystifying Tuition and Financial Aid,” President Casper discusses cost and price in higher education, offering evidence that college remains affordable and attainable at Stanford and elsewhere.
As we focus on such topics as tuition and financial aid, however, we must not lose sight of our obligations to the future. The words of the founders of this university, Jane and Leland Stanford, continue to guide us. When their only child died at age 15 in 1884, they used their wealth to do something for "other people's" sons and daughters. In a 1902 address, Jane Stanford reiterated that the moving spirit of the founders was "love of humanity and a desire to render the greatest possible service to mankind." She said, "The University was accordingly designed for the betterment of mankind morally, spiritually, intellectually, physically, and materially. The public at large, and not alone the comparatively few students who can attend the University, are the chief and ultimate beneficiaries of the foundation." The university was to "resist the tendency to the stratification of society, by keeping open an avenue whereby the deserving and exceptional may rise through their own efforts from the lowest to the highest station in life."
Thus, the university carefully conserves its resources, especially the endowment the Stanfords created, from which generations of students have benefited and to which generations of graduates have contributed. We remain "need-blind" in admitting students—that is, admitting students based on qualifications, not ability to pay, and ensuring they have the resources to complete their studies. This commitment is one of the principles that guides our financial decisions. Others include our promise to provide the highest-quality education for the most talented undergraduate and graduate students, our dedication to innovative research, and our obligation to ensure the university is here and thriving for future generations.
As trustees, my colleagues and I at Stanford and at other institutions throughout the nation must be diligent in attending to the complex moral, fiduciary, and legal duties of both the present and the future—the wise oversight of endowments, the responsible setting of tuitions, the maintenance of high academic standards, and the containment of cost. We serve the public best if we constantly remind ourselves, as the Stanfords did, of "other people's" children—many not-yet-born and facing a world of not-yet-imagined challenges. As David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford, said, "The best spent money of the present is that which is used for the future....The university stands for the future."