Other private schools across the country have moved to promote racial, ethnic, and income diversity by lowering tuition fees. The free tuition movement has centered on opposite ends of the educational spectrum, in community colleges in cities like Chicago and states like Tennessee, as well as in most elite schools.
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Both Harvard and Stanford make tuition fees for students from families with incomes up to $ 150,000 nearly double what the USC sets
States have also tried to cut costs in their public colleges, with nearly half being inclusive new York, Oregon and Tennesseewhich guarantees its lowest-income residents free tuition in two- or four-year schools. New Mexico lawmakers are discussing a plan to make tuition in the state’s public colleges and universities free for all residents. And the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Dr. Until recently, Folt was Chancellor and its proportion of low-income students has steadily increased.
The USC plan takes a page from the University of California playbook and sets the same family income limit for tuition-free education – $ 80,000 – as the public system’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. The USC said it would increase the amount of student aid it offers by more than $ 30 million a year, mostly through philanthropy, and provide more aid to 4,000 students a year.
About a third of the classes entering in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021 will benefit from either free tuition or larger aid packages, the school said. “This will be a focus of our future fundraisers,” said Eric Abelev, a school representative. His last campaign raised $ 7 billion, including $ 636 million in grants.
Currently, 31 percent of USC students come from families in the bottom 60 percent of income earners across the country, the school said. The student body, including alumni and undergraduate students, is 29 percent white, 5.3 percent African American, 16.9 percent Asian, and 14.6 percent Hispanic, 25.4 percent from other countries.
“It is fitting that USC, at the center of the varsity blues scandal, would take this important step,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow of the Century Foundation who studies college opportunities for low-income students.
