The university has revealed a new financial aid system policy unlike any other in the country. By eliminating need-based loans and increasing institutional grants to students in order to meet need, Vanderbilt has ensured that any student admissible to the university is financially able to attend.

It is, from all angles, nothing short of a masterpiece. The new financial aid plan ensures that every student’s financial need will be met without the use of need-based loans. This means scholarships, work-study earnings, federal grants and Vanderbilt’s own institutional grants will fulfill the need as necessary.

What does this do for current Vanderbilt students? It means that beginning next fall (spring semester for graduating seniors) student need-based loans from Vanderbilt are a thing of the past and the university itself will make up the cost. The removal of this burden will provide students a chance to leave college with fewer loans to pay back upon entering the workforce.

What about the benefits for future students? This new initiative broadens the pool for the potential Class of 2013 and thereafter. While lower- and middle-income students before have had to make the difficult decision of whether to take out need-based loans in order to attend, this concern will be essentially non-existent. This translates into more accessibility for those students who would otherwise choose to attend public schools with lower costs due to lower in-state tuition and state-funded scholarships.

What about the benefits for Vanderbilt as an institution? Ultimately, the university gains from this opening up of its doors. Because every student admitted will have the ability to attend, Vanderbilt will choose its freshman classes based on academic ability. None of the best students who wish to attend will be turned away for financial reasons, and as admission standards continue to increase, this will only result in increasingly better freshmen classes. This, in turn, results in a more prestigious degree for Vanderbilt graduates of any year.

The university will promote this plan as a means for achieving racial, geographic and income level diversity. The plan, without a doubt, will reach these goals, as it will both provide access to groups that could not otherwise afford tuition, as well as begin to deconstruct stereotypes of Vanderbilt as an “all white, all Southern, all rich” university.

These are, however, superficial reasons to support the new plan. The “no need-based loans” initiative is not an affirmative action plan, and all Vanderbilt students should hope it never becomes such. The students of minority racial and geographic groups whose numbers will increase will be top students among other top students at Vanderbilt, not quota fillers. This will both increase the prestige of the university as well as providing a quality and deserved education to those who need it most.

Does the plan have potential for problems in the decades to come? There are questions about how this approach to financial aid will affect how families perceive saving money for higher education. Will the incentive for middle-income families to save disappear in future generations, as the option of the university picking up the bill seems so readily available to lower-income families? In this worst of consequences, we may see some of these students in the next generation unable to pay for a Vanderbilt education.

These issues notwithstanding, students, families, faculty and administrators should all praise Chancellor Nick Zeppos and Provost Richard McCarty for their leadership on this initiative to improve the financial situations of current and future students. Our university and our degrees will be better off for their efforts.