ST. LOUIS — Washington University in St. Louis will adopt a new financial aid policy next fall that aims to increase the affordability of an undergraduate degree from the school.
"Beginning this fall, students will no longer have federal loans in their financial aid packages," Washington University Vice Chancellor of Admissions and Financial Aid, Ronné P. Turner, said. "Those federal loans will be replaced by WashU scholarship dollars."
Under the "no-loan" policy, federal loans for undergraduate students will be removed from all financial aid packages and replaced with scholarships and university grants, according to a news release from the university. The move will help ensure all students can earn a degree from the school without acquiring thousands of dollars in debt.
"We are deeply committed to making a WashU education accessible for all talented students who earn admission,” Chancellor Andrew D. Martin said in a statement Friday. “We have worked hard to make good on our promise to remove financial barriers for all admitted undergraduate students, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds. We want to get them here, support them during their time here, and prepare them to do great things. Now, when they graduate from WashU, they will do so debt-free.”
A decade ago, WashU was one of the least economically diverse campuses in the country with only 5% of admitted students being Pell Grant-eligible, the news release said. The number has increased over the years, with 21% of the incoming class of 2027 being eligible for the federal grant program.
The "no-loan" policy comes after initiatives aimed at expanding financial aid like the WashU Pledge, which allows full-time Missouri and southern Illinois students with a family income of $75,000 or less a year to obtain free undergraduate education, according to the school's financial aid website.
"In the past, some qualified students and their families — including those from middle-income backgrounds — might have thought attending WashU was financially impossible,” Turner said in a statement. “Removing loans from our financial aid packages is another way to show those students we want them here, and that we’ll do what it takes so they can receive a WashU education without taking on the burden of student loan debt.”
The goal is to empower students from limited and moderate-income backgrounds to study what they are truly interested in.
"A lot of students who come from limited and moderate-income backgrounds, sometimes they make choices not only about where they're going to go to college but sometimes about what they want to study, based on feeling like they have to make a certain amount of money to pay off their loans," Turner said. "This really opens up opportunities for our students."
To learn more about the university's financial aid policies, click here.
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