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.

[...] there's something that every college could emulate about Stanford's policy: it's incredibly simple and straightforward. — vox.com

Critics have argued that big arts-building investments are vanity projects, or that private donors should finance community arts organizations or scholarships instead. — NYT

Nine student/architect teams will assemble at a private residence in Portola Valley,  Calif., on Friday, Oct. 26, for dinner to launch a weekend of intense design and serious competition. The assignment is to design an artist's cottage to be built on Sonia Dhillon-Marty's property, Champ de Portola, by 2014.

Nine architects from four countries will be paired with the students. Teams will be given site plans, a project description and a philosophical statement, but little else. — news.stanford.edu

Having been given a prized collection of contemporary American art earlier this year, Stanford University on Wednesday announced plans for a new $30.5-million museum to house it.

New York-based Ennead Architects will design a 30,000-square-foot building devoted to the Anderson Collection –- 121 works by 86 artists collected by a Bay Area family... — latimesblogs.latimes.com

If Cornell University were to win the city’s competition to build a new science graduate school, it would install on Roosevelt Island almost four acres of solar panels, 500 geothermal wells, and buildings with the rare distinction of generating as much power as they use. — nytimes.com