News Briefs

Morgan Modjeski and magally zelaya, Staff

Free tuition at top American university

On Feb.20, Stanford University announced that it would provide free education to students whose families have an annual income of less than $100,000.

Additionally, families who earn less than $60,000 per year will not have to pay for room or board.

On the same day, the university announced increases to next year’s tuition and residence fees that will bring total undergraduate fees to $47,212 per year.

“Although Stanford’s tuition has gone up over the past five years, thanks to our increasingly generous financial aid program, families with incomes less than $150,000 will find a Stanford education much more affordable than it was five years ago,” said John Etchemendy, provost, in a university press release.

“For most of these students, attending Stanford will cost less than most private and many public universities.”

The increase to financial aid is the largest in the university’s history and will bring total student aid to $114 million for the 2008-09, according to the university’s website.

Stanford University is located in Palo Alto, California and had a student population 14,890 in 2006.

Learn about drugs next week

National Pharmacist Awareness Week (PAW) will take place next week from March 3-9. At the University of Manitoba, students from the Faculty of Pharmacy will lead this year’s campaign entitled Pharmacists — Your Trusted Partner in Health.

Students will provide information on illicit drugs, contraception, the morning-after pill, blood pressure, over-the-counter pain-relievers, and cough and colds in a series of informational booths. The booths will be set up in University Centre on the Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of next week.

Information will also be available to students who are considering pursuing a degree in pharmacy.

The first annual PAW took place in 1991 and was an initiative of the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists. Originally, the campaign was held in the first week of November but in 1998 it was designated to the month of March.

Future of government bursary program now known

The fate of the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation was decided yesterday, when the government announced its federal budget. At press time, the details of the foundation’s future were not yet known.

The foundation, put in place to help fund the studies of Canadian undergraduate students, is facing the end of its 10-year mandate in the 2008-09 academic year. The foundation has distributed $285 million in bursaries to qualifying undergraduate students every year since its inception in 1998.

Student representatives from across the country expressed concern over the foundation’s future in the days leading up to the announcement of the budget.

According to Zach Churchill, national chairperson for the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, a failure to renew the foundation’s mandate, “could mean disaster” for Canadian students.

National chair for the Canadian Federation of Students Amanda Aziz is calling for the federal government “to step up and create a true national granting program to replace the foundation.”

In an interview prior to the budget announcement, Andrew Parkin, the executive associate director of the foundation, said he had “no idea” about the fate of the foundation.

For details about the foundation as related in the budget, please see the Manitoban online.