Penn will pay tuition for poorer families
PHILADELPHIA --The University of Pennsylvania said Thursday that it will pay tuition and room-and-board for students whose families earn less than $50,000 a year.
With the announcement, Penn joins a handful of other high-profile schools that have waived such fees in an effort to economically diversify their student populations.
The program follows through on Penn President Amy Gutmann's pledge to make an Ivy League education more accessible, and also included financial aid to middle-income students.
"We want middle-income and low-income students to be able to afford our education," she said.
At the most selective schools, just 3 percent of students come from the poorest socio-economic quarter of families, while 74 percent come from the richest, according to a 2003 study by The Century Foundation, a New York-based think tank.
Penn's program, which applies to current and incoming students, will cover between 300 and 400 students. A Penn undergraduate pays $32,364 in tuition and $9,402 in room-and-board per year.
Penn officials say their program has the highest eligibility threshold at $50,000. Harvard's no-tuition policy, announced two years ago, covers students with family incomes of up to $40,000; Stanford, which just announced its program last week, sets its bar at $45,000.
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