Boston’s aid plan achieves leap in equitable access

Inside Higher Ed 08 September 2017

With a single change in its financial aid policies – wiping out all loan funds for any student eligible for a Pell Grant – Boston University has increased the proportion of its first-year students who qualify for the federal grants for low-income students to 18.2% this autumn, from 14.6% a year ago, writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed.

The financial aid change and the roughly US$25,000 investment per student was funded by a gift but represents a very purposeful decision by the private research university's president, Robert A Brown, to use the institution's US$1.7 billion endowment to drive the Pell percentage higher.

"To accomplish this, we made a decision to accept less in the way of [financial] reserves," Brown said.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site

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