Brown and Stanford universities' announcements of free tuition, room and board for undergraduates below a certain income level sound impressive - but Penn's program is already very similar.
In the past week, both Stanford and Brown announced expanded financial-aid policies that increase the amount of grant aid given to qualified students.
They join the ranks of Penn, Yale and Harvard universities and Swarthmore, Pomona and Haverford colleges, all of which announced redesigned aid plans earlier this school year. Penn announced its new plan on Dec. 17.
Brown's plan, announced Feb. 23, ensures that most families earning under $60,000 a year will not be expected to contribute to their student's education and eliminates loans for students from families earning less than $100,000 a year.
Stanford's program, announced Feb. 20, eliminates tuition, room and board payments for students coming from families with incomes less than $60,000. Students from families with incomes less than $100,000 will not be required to pay tuition. Those in both brackets will still have student-contribution components to the packages.
While the promise of a tuition-free education is certainly appealing, Penn's program, which gradually replaces loans with grants for all aid-eligible students, essentially offers the same aid to students, Bill Schilling, Penn's director of student financial aid, said.
"Currently, for the typical student from a family [with an income] under $60,000, we're already covering tuition with grant," he said.
Starting next year, the University will extend no-loan packages to students with family incomes under $100,000. All other aid-eligible students will receive a 10-percent reduction in loans next year, and beginning in fall 2009, all aid packages will be loan-free.
Though only a handful of the most selective schools have announced expanded student-aid programs, the steady pace of announcements has been a positive surprise, according to Roland King, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
According to King, college affordability has moved to the forefront of higher-education policy in the past few years due to calls from Congress for greater accountability.
The greater scrutiny has "encouraged institutions to look a lot more critically and maybe more aggressively to contain costs and make education affordable," he said.
At Penn, the new aid initiatives started when President Amy Gutmann laid out her Penn Compact at the beginning of her term, said Bonnie Gibson, vice president of the office of budget and management analysis.
Gutmann's pledge "has been far more of a [driving force] than trying to keep up with what our peers are doing," Gibson said.
