Massachusetts Lowers Threshold for Free College
Credit: Suzanne Kreiter / The Boston Globe / Getty Images- Starting next fall, in-state undergraduates attending the University of Massachusetts whose families earn $75,000 or less will not be charged tuition and fees.
- Massachusetts already implemented a program ensuring free tuition for families earning under $85,000.
- This last-dollar program will meet students’ needs after all federal, state, and private aid has been considered.
- The commonwealth recently made community college free to all in-state students regardless of income.
Beginning in fall 2025, University of Massachusetts (UMass) students from families earning $75,000 or less will attend tuition-free.
The initiative — which applies to undergraduates at the university’s campuses in Amherst, Dartmouth, Lowell, and Boston — advances the commonwealth’s efforts to make public higher education more accessible to low- and middle-income families.
“These programs are highlighting how truly affordable a UMass degree is, and I applaud our UMass chancellors for their efforts to ensure students and families are aware of that fact,” UMass President Marty Meehan said in a statement.
In effect, the announcement lowers the threshold for free college in Massachusetts by $10,000. Through the MassGrant Plus program, initiated this year, in-state students from families earning up to $85,000 qualify for tuition and fee waivers (students still pay for room and board). All Pell Grant-eligible students attend tuition-free.
For students from families making between $85,000 and $100,000 per year, tuition and fees are reduced by up to half.
The MassGrant program applies to all four-year colleges in the commonwealth, public and private.
What’s more, Massachusetts has already made community college free to all resident students, regardless of income.
“It’s a bit formidable to think about Pell eligibility, the MASSGrant program, all the options out there,” UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Mark Fuller told NBC Boston. “We’re trying to streamline that and attract attention to the fact that — we were already doing a lot of this — but we want working families to know that college is an option.”
As a last-dollar program, the new program — which goes by different names at the four campuses (“The UMass Dartmouth Deal,” for example) — covers student financial need after all other forms of aid from federal, state, and private sources are taken into account. This suggests some students might still have loans as part of their financial aid package.
By essentially expanding the $80 million MASSGrant Plus program in this fashion, state legislators are broadening access for more families, though not by much. Already, 92% of students at UMass Amherst, the state’s flagship campus, who come from families earning under $75,000 bear no tuition costs. And at UMass Lowell and UMass Dartmouth, that figure is 93%.
Still, these recent investments in public higher education represent something of a departure for a state historically more focused on the quality of its private colleges and universities. In 2021, the commonwealth ranked No. 45 in higher education as a share of income and No. 34 in terms of per capita investments.
It’s curious that a state so steeped in higher education history and teeming with outstanding private colleges and universities cannot claim to have a public university system on par with those in California, Michigan, Virginia, and Wisconsin, to name a few exemplars.
While these latest efforts will make higher education more affordable in Massachusetts and no doubt improve measures of return on investment, it remains to be seen if the commonwealth’s leaders similarly invest in programs, faculty, and campus infrastructure to build a university system worthy of the birthplace of American higher education.