The pricing of higher education is always a bit mysterious. In the past, colleges and universities have gotten into considerable trouble for price-fixing when it emerged that they had colluded to set their tuition rates or financial aid packages. But sometimes colleges and universities can read the situation without colluding.
I doubt that the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the entire University of Texas system coordinated their decisions to cut tuition to zero for students of “modest incomes,” even if these institutions acted at nearly the same time. They were just joining a large crowd of colleges and universities that have recently decided that free tuition for the non-affluent is the way to go.
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But whether this is a good idea remains to be seen.
Scholarships for very bright and determined students lacking the financial resources to attend college are an old idea. But the new trend seemingly goes beyond that. It involves free tuition for many students who could plausibly pay a portion of the expenses.
Why ask the students who do pay full or partial tuition to subsidize the others?
The colleges present this as a matter of “social justice,” and perhaps that is the main driver. But it is also driven by an odd form of institutional vanity. No college wants to be left out of getting its “share” of students from impoverished or humble backgrounds. As the number of students from such backgrounds eager to enroll in college continues to shrink (see my essay on America’s demographic cliff), colleges offer “free tuition” as a lure.
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Whether the students responding to this lure are better off in the long run is impossible to say. Some might be trading away perfectly good career opportunities for a credential of dubious worth. Will the colleges and universities themselves benefit from having a larger number of students whose families rank lower on the income scale? If those students are bright and ambitious, yes, but otherwise, probably not.
In general, the free tuition gambit combines two trends: first, the effort of elite colleges to sustain their story that they serve a broad public interest and are not just a club for the children of wealthy and privileged families; second, the flailing of institutions of higher education that are waking up to the reality that young people have more and more good options besides seeking a four-year degree.
Follow the National Association of Scholars on X.
Cover image created by Jared Gould using text-to-image AI. Prompt: “Depict social justice activism influencing colleges and universities to offer free tuition, represented symbolically. Exclude any words or text from the image.”
Isn’t there an average tuition discount rate of something like 47%?
Yes, at private colleges, on average.
At public, for in-state, much less discount %.
It is interesting that actual tuition after discounts has been decreasing for a number of years. Even before the tuition rise set in. This is something that the people attacking on colleges ignore on.
The problem is that average does not mean equal.
I saw the games played at UMass Amherst — there are all kinds of ways to play games to direct monies to minority and female students. For example, while the UM School of Education funded 50% of the grad students, everyone knew that White males would not be funded.
So at a private IHE, when people don’t even know about the 47% factor, no one would ever know without actual access to the individual student financial data, and I am not even sure that could be obtained in litigation.
And should we trust them to be fair on this?
Is free tuition for some lucky students from the middle class really just a “gambit” on the part of the likes of MIT, Penn, Carnegie Mellon? That juicy endowment at Texas is just some kind of swindle?
Are the likes of these schools just flailing to nab some suckers with free tuition? Before the students figure out that they have other opportunities?
The two things I am seeing are “last dollar” and “loan free.”
For example, Massachusetts’ “free” Community College is “last dollar” — you have to exhaust all other forms of financial aid first. Not sure if that includes loans.
Loan free is income threshold based, so you gotta file a Fin Aid file, and my guess is that they would also require you to take all Federal and State grants first — and they are almost certainly including both individual and family contributions toward this.
What they may be doing is addressing the issue of “unmet need” — back in the ’80s, the financial aid form would list a student’s grants, loans, and work study award — and then have another line of “unmet need” which the student had to come up with somehow as well.
I really would like to see what this “free” tuition truly is, and I doubt the institutions are willing to explicitly explain that…
For example, Massachusetts excludes anyone who already has a college degree, so the woman who got a BA in Basketweaving and then had children who wants to become an electrician in her 40s is SOL….
Here are the details on the MA program: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/free-community-college