The University of Pennsylvania today became the latest top university to say that it would give its financially needy undergraduates a free higher education. In a news release, the university said that students whose annual family incomes were less than $50,000 would receive grants that would pay for tuition, room, and board. The grants would replace loans for those students.
The move followed a similar announcement last week by Stanford University (The Chronicle, March 17) and two weeks ago by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (The Chronicle, March 7). Other institutions that have made such offers include the University of Minnesota (The Chronicle, February 13), the University of Virginia (The Chronicle, January 18, 2005), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (The Chronicle, October 2, 2003), and Princeton University (The Chronicle, February 16, 2001).
