Summary
The University of Texas System has approved a tuition-free program for undergraduate students from families earning $100,000 or less, starting next fall.
The initiative, funded by an immediate $35 million in endowments and long-term investments, seeks to lower student debt and improve access to higher education.
Qualifying students must be Texas residents, enroll full-time, and apply for financial aid.
While the program builds on previous UT tuition relief efforts funded by endowments and oil royalties, critics, including Texas lawmakers, have called it unconstitutional and proposed cutting UT’s budget.
I wonder if anyone will get strategically divorced to stay under the limit.
Socialism in my Texas?!?! /s
Wait, good news? I’m waiting for a republican judge or the house to somehow block this.
Love this. Forgiving student loans is a band-aid. Making higher education free or more affordable is the real solution.
On paper this sounds good but this sounds like another way to keep rich families rich. The only way to get into UT these days is have connections, or be really good at something like football or very high gpa. The high gpa and football people were already getting scholarships so guess who will get this new money? People that already had the money to pay for the school.
I make too much to take advantage of this so obviously I hate it.
Just kidding, I’m fucking excited for the folks who will get to take advantage of this program. Fuck the lawmakers trying to axe this.
This is pretty neat. Did not expect this at all. Going to look into it more.
I guess at least you won’t be paying to get screwed, that’s a pretty significant upgrade from most universities.
Let me know when they start doing this for graduate students.
This is nice to hear but there are lots of expenses besides tuition. Like housing, books, food, “fees”, etc. If the program costs just $35mm in a huge university like that, you know it’s not covering much. Source: this was sort of the situation at my old school. Tuition was fairly low back then, but everything else still added up.
Holy fuck. You literally cannot win with some people.
It’s a good positive step but there’s still a way to go. Headline makes it sound different.
If you live close enough and source your books from somewhere else than the campus bookstore you solve most of these problems. Unless a course uses Pearson, fuck Pearson.
Your point on addtional costs stands, but it looks like the 35 Million isn’t the wh9le picture.
Unless I’m misreading the article this program is, rather than new, an extension and expansion of their previous 2019 tuition assistance plan.
In 2019, the Regents established a $167 million endowment at UT Austin to fully cover tuition and mandatory fees for in-state undergraduate students from families earning less than $65,000, and cover the majority of tuition fees for families earning up to $125,000.
In 2022, the Regents extended the program to all UT academic institutions with a second endowment of nearly $300 million, known as “Promise Plus.”
I didn’t see the details of this new plan but extrapolating, they still offer reduced or dismissed fees on a sliding income scale.
