Man I wish this had been in place in the 90's when I went to Stanford. I grew up lower middle class in the Central Valley. My parents did everything they could to help, but that didn't make a dent of course. Stanford was fairly generous with outright grant money, but I still graduated with enough debt that it really handicapped my wife and I in our early adulthood years, and that was after taking 2 years off to work full time to help save money for tuition.

Still, I can't complain. I wouldn't trade my Stanford experience for anything. And for what it's worth, it would have actually cost me more to go to Berkeley as the aid package there wasn't nearly as generous.