The University of Southern California announced that it was offering free tuition to families with incomes below $80,000 starting this fall. The move should help USC attract more diverse and talented applicants and could, hopefully, kick off a new round of free tuition announcements from highly ranked colleges that fall just outside the very top tier. (Currently, schools such as Harvard and Stanford which have significantly larger endowments, offer free tuition to students with household incomes below $150,000.)
Carol Folt, USC’s president stated, “People work so hard to have a house and we didn’t want that to count against their chances of having their kids going to the school.” While the mainstream media is likely to reference the college admissions scandal, we believe this move was likely made independently of that development.
