Missouri alumni who went to court here claiming that state law entitled them to free tuition have won a ruling that could force the university to refund $450 million to some 200,000 students, past and present.
Their suit, filed four years ago, was based on an 1889 law providing that "all youths, resident of the state of Missouri, over the age of 16 years," could attend the university without paying tuition.
Missouri was one of more than a dozen agrarian states that adopted such laws in the late 1880's, a result of a pro-farm populist movement. Robert Herman, the lawyer who brought the case, says all those states except Missouri changed their laws by the 1930's. But in Missouri it was only last year, with the suit pending, that the law was changed to allow for tuition payments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/education/17TUIT.html?8bhp
_____
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Peter
Their suit, filed four years ago, was based on an 1889 law providing that "all youths, resident of the state of Missouri, over the age of 16 years," could attend the university without paying tuition.
Missouri was one of more than a dozen agrarian states that adopted such laws in the late 1880's, a result of a pro-farm populist movement. Robert Herman, the lawyer who brought the case, says all those states except Missouri changed their laws by the 1930's. But in Missouri it was only last year, with the suit pending, that the law was changed to allow for tuition payments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/education/17TUIT.html?8bhp
_____
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Peter
