As the cost of higher education rises nationwide, Davidson College announced this month that it is joining several universities across the state in offering free tuition for some families.
Starting in fall 2027, the university will cover tuition for new students from families earning less than $175,000. Families earning less than $85,000 will have all costs covered, including housing and meals.
Davidson joins several universities in the state that are experimenting with free tuition, in addition to institutions elsewhere, including Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Duke University offers free tuition for families from North Carolina and South Carolina earning $150,000 or less, and UNC-Chapel Hill offers it for in-state families earning $80,000 or below.
In North Carolina, some schools are slashing costs to attract new students amid enrollment challenges, while others aim to remain accessible to lower-income families.
Davidson tuition alone costs $73,090 for incoming first-year students, and the total cost of attendance is nearly $93,000. That puts the Charlotte-area college just behind Duke, which charges more than $96,000.
About 70% of Davidson’s 2,000 students currently receive some sort of financial aid, with 50% of students receiving need-based aid. Davidson also pledged in 2007 to meet 100% of students’ need without any loans. Davidson President Doug Hicks said he anticipates the new free-tuition financial aid structure will help between 50 and 100 additional students per year.
“This effort is doubling down on our commitment to access and affordability to recruit the best and brightest students to Davidson, regardless of their family’s ability to pay, and it’s also making clearer and simpler what that cost might actually be,” Hicks said.
The Assembly called Hicks to learn more about what this new policy will do for Davidson and how the university is affording it.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
How might this new free-tuition plan encourage more students to apply?
We do think it will widen our applicant pool. It will help prospective students to see that they should go ahead and apply, knowing that the financial aid package they’ll receive will help cover costs at Davidson. And we certainly hope that with this commitment to financial aid and the overall excellent education we offer, this will also then yield more students from across the socioeconomic spectrum.
In higher ed, we hear a lot about the “missing middle.” How will offering free tuition help address this?
This is a direct effort to address the challenge that low- and middle-income families face. So looking at the overall income distribution in America, I see that families earning $175,000 or less reaches well into the middle class, and in fact reaches about four in five families. So, about 80% of U.S. families will be eligible.
For families earning $175,000 or more, our current policies still apply, where we meet 100% of calculated need, and so families close to but above $175,000 are going to get significant grants toward tuition, and so those programs will continue above the 80th percentile of families in the income distribution, if you will. So we’re doing what we can to make college accessible and affordable on up well beyond the middle class.
How does this build on what Davidson already offers?
This past year, we spent $80 million on financial aid. This coming year that we’re just entering, we’ll spend $85 million, and our projection is in the ballpark of $90 million with this new structure. So in a nutshell, the amount we spend on financial aid is massive.
For many of these families under $175,000 income, many of them are already getting full tuition. This guarantees it. This makes it more systematic and clear for families. And I also want to mention, for many families who are in the income bracket of under $85,000, most of those families are already receiving nearly a full scholarship.
How will the university pay for this?
Our endowment is largely comprised of money designated for financial aid, so endowed scholarships. So, 70% of our endowment payout each year that we receive goes straight into the pockets of students as financial aid.
Our finances would not work as a college, as a private college, without generous donors and specifically an endowment that builds over time. We also benefit from annual fund donors who give to financial aid and scholarships on a current basis and annual basis.
We get a return from the endowment each year. That’s under 5% of the value of the endowment on a rolling average, but that will cover about two-thirds of the $90 million, and the other money comes from annual donors as well as deductions from our operating budget.
How does Davidson’s free tuition program compare with what other schools are doing?
We’re not the only school to move in this direction. Other presidents, other boards, other colleges and universities have made their policies first, more generous, and second, more clear and simple for families to understand. And so we’ve been looking at this actually for a couple of years, and we decided to go now because we’re confident that we have the financial structure and the staff structure to advise families and to do the calculations to move forward.
Other schools have more targeted programs, only in North Carolina or South Carolina. This program applies to all U.S.-based students of the whole country, whether you’re a citizen or a permanent resident, and so our program is quite broad in who is eligible for it. We believe that will make a significant difference to our student body being socioeconomically diverse.
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