A Dartmouth Education for Free?

Dartmouth announced this week that the college will offer free tuition to any student whose family makes under $75,000 a year. They will also replace all loans with scholarships, so students can expect to graduate debt free. Read their press release for the full story.

Dartmouth is certainly not the first expensive school to ease the pain of college costs for middle-class Americans. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania have all taken similar actions.

But the news may not be all good. Don’t expect the majority of U.S. colleges to follow suit, for only a few elite schools in the country have the type of multi-billion dollar endowment that enables them to waive tuition costs. Also, these free tuition offers will inevitably increase the applicant pool and make places like Dartmouth and Stanford even more difficult to get into.

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