Princeton provides full tuition to families making under $100,000

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

Princeton University announced on September 8 that it would expand its financial aid program so students coming from families earning under $100,000 a year would pay nothing to attend the Ivy League university.

“One of Princeton’s defining values is our commitment to ensure that talented students from all backgrounds can not only afford a Princeton education but can flourish on our campus and in the world beyond it,” said Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber in a press release.

The new financial aid policies, which Eisgruber said were made possible by “the sustained generosity of our alumni and friends,” will take effect for all undergraduates beginning in fall 2023.

With the new changes, most families with under $100,000 in annual income will pay nothing for tuition, room, and board. This is up from the university’s previous $65,000 threshold for this assistance. Over 25 percent of the undergraduate student body is expected to receive this level of aid. The $3,500 student contribution that students usually earned via summer savings and campus work will be eliminated to provide more opportunities for students to pursue study abroad programs and co-curricular activities year-round.

In 2001, Princeton became the first university in the country to completely eschew loans as a form of financial aid. Princeton switched to a program consisting entirely of grants and scholarships that did not need to be repaid.

The move by Princeton comes at a time when skyrocketing college costs and students taking on substantial debt burdens are in the national spotlight. President Biden declared in August that Pell Grant recipients would receive up to $20,000 in debt cancellation in loans held by the Department of Education, and non-Pell Grant recipients would receive up to $10,000 in debt cancellation. A borrower’s income had to be below $125,000 a year to qualify.

Federal Pell Grants are only issued to students with exceptional need. The maximum Federal Pell Grant award was $6,895 for the 2022-23 award year. The Education Data Initiative (educationdata.org) reported that the average Pell Grant award in 2021 was $4,491. Fifty-one percent of Pell Grant funds went to students whose families earned less than $20,000 annually. Louisiana had 102,716 Pell Grant recipients in 2021.

U.S. News and World Report recently released average tuition and fees at ranked colleges. Those numbers are $10,423 for public, in-state schools; $22,953 for public, out-of-state schools; and $39,723 for private schools. These numbers do not include room and board.

According to a press release issued by the White House citing Department of Education statistics, the federal student loan debt is $1.6 trillion spread out among over 45 million borrowers. One-third of borrowers have debt, but no degree. Approximately 16 percent of borrowers are in default, including a third of senior citizens with student debt.

A 2022 report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce noted that the average price of tuition, fees, and room and board for an undergraduate degree increased by 169 percent between 1980 and 2020.

Black borrowers suffer disproportionately from loans incurred from rising tuition costs. A typical Black borrower who began college in the 1995-96 school year still owed 95 percent of their original student debt 20 years later. Fifty-eight percent of Black college students receive a Pell Grant, according to the Education Data Initiative.

“Princeton’s generous financial aid program has transformed the socioeconomic diversity of our undergraduate student population, allowing more students from across backgrounds to learn from one another’s life experiences,” said Dean of the College Jill Dolan.

This article originally published in the September 19, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.