Stanford University has just taken a huge step toward helping students whose parents make less than $125,000 a year get a college education without accruing inordinate amounts of debt.

Vox reports:

If a student’s parents make less than $125,000 per year, and if they have assets of less than $300,000, excluding retirement accounts, the parents won’t be expected to pay anything toward their children’s Stanford tuition. Families with incomes lower than $65,000 won’t have to contribute to room and board, either.

Students themselves will have to pay up to $5,000 each year from summer earnings, savings, and part-time work. There’s no rule that parents can’t cover their students’ required contribution.

Stanford is much more generous toward middle-class and upper-middle class students than the federal government is. Most students who get subsidized loans and federal Pell Grants come from families making less than $60,000 per year. But it also enrolls an outsize proportion of wealthy students. In 2010, the university’s director of financial aid said the median family income at Stanford was around $125,000.

Read more.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata