Yale University is broadening its financial-aid program to cover more middle-class families, saying that beginning this fall, students from households earning up to $200,000 can attend tuition-free, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Currently, students admitted to the university whose families earn up to $100,000 will pay nothing.
Tuition at Yale next school year is $72,500, with the full cost of attendance, including room and board, fees, and books, at about $98,000.
Yale has already doubled its number of low-income students in recent years and is now one of the small group of very wealthy universities, including Harvard and MIT, that make similar offers to six-figure households.
"We have made a lot of progress with low-income families and students over the past decade, and now we want to continue to make those inroads with some of our middle-class and upper-middle-class families," said Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid.
Out of 6,800 Yale undergraduates today, more than 1,000 attend the university at no cost and 56% receive some aid, according to The Journal.
Yale's endowment rose 11% last year to $44 billion.
Since 2020, Yale has been tuition-free for families earning $75,000. The increase to $100,000 means nearly half of American families with school-age children will be eligible to attend the university tuition-free, Yale said.
Quinlan noted that the deal is limited to families with "typical assets," declining to elaborate on how the university defines typical. "If you have an outsized asset portfolio, even if you have an income level that's in one of these areas, you might get a different financial-aid offer," he added.
Student attendance at elite private schools such as Yale varies significantly by family income, according to Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based research group. Low-income and high-income students fare better in enrollment than "the missing middle," the group said.
The past few years have brought a number of announcements from schools making their financial aid more generous, including Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, which each offer tuition-free entry to families earning up to about $200,000.
Colleges including Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Texas system cover tuition for students whose families earn close to or above six figures.
Quinlan said "there's an inherent challenge to this high-cost-of-attendance, high-aid model. These thresholds have been helpful in communicating with prospective students and families in a very noisy information environment."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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