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 guess at least you won’t be paying to get screwed, that’s a pretty significant upgrade from most universities.
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Love this. Forgiving student loans is a band-aid. Making higher education free or more affordable is the real solution.
Let me know when they start doing this for graduate students.
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.
Did you miss the part where it only goes to families making under 100K? You got a funny definition of “rich”.
This is pretty neat. Did not expect this at all. Going to look into it more.
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.
It doesn’t even make sense. This will cause people to move to the state. Don’t they want more tax income and wage slaves?
They hate education and the educated.
Socialism in my Texas?!?! /s
It’s more likely than you think.
But you have to be in Texas.
University of Texas is progressive? What in the fuck is going on?
Meanwhile, in California, we fuck students in the ass with our prices and we don’t have free tuition.
If you’re a student moving to Texas because of this, I can’t even blame you at this point.
As someone who went there yes it is. It’s in austin too
I wonder if anyone will get strategically divorced to stay under the limit.
Wait, good news? I’m waiting for a republican judge or the house to somehow block this.
Read OP’s last sentence.
Oh, yea. Checks out
I AGREE with the Lawmakers who say that Public Institutions are NOT allowed to use their Money to Help Working Class Families!
You dropped your /s
Read his comment history. That’s kind of his thing.
So he’s a dropper. Got it.
So…you’re just an asshole then?
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.
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.
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.
Headline says tuition. Nothing else.
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.
Reminder to everyone, college and university didn’t used to cost verymuch. Governor of California Ronald Reagan didn’t like the Vietnam War protests happening on University of California campuses and decided to change the university funding model to make students pay a lot more for their education and reduce the number of protesters. President Nixon saw this and asked for advice to stop college protests nationwide.
