MA school ends free tuition

The free ride is ending for students at a small engineering college in Massachusetts.

The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering announced Thursday that beginning in the 2010-2011 academic year, it will no longer provide full scholarships to all admitted students. The school will instead cover roughly half of tuition costs, or about $18,000 per student, per year.

The change will not affect current students or those already accepted for the fall. The college, in Needham, was founded in 1997 with a grant from the F.W. Olin Foundation.

Olin president Richard Miller said the economic downturn has caused its endowment to drop in value. He says the school has one of the largest per-student endowments in the country and relies on it for 80 percent of total operating costs.