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October 30, 2024By Bill Doyle
CFP Correspondent
College is expensive, but Anna Maria College, Assumption University and the College of the Holy Cross have announced new financial aid policies to make themselves more accessible.
“I think we’re leading the way, that’s what it says about Catholic colleges,” said William Boffi, Assumption vice president of enrollment management, “as has been the case for 100 years. Back when Catholics weren’t allowed to get into the Ivy League schools, the Catholic schools started popping up to serve the Catholic population.”
Assumption announced in September that starting with the 2025-26 school year, 100 percent of tuition will be covered with scholarship aid for incoming freshmen and transfer students from Massachusetts who are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant, possess a high school grade point average of 3.2 and who choose to live on campus. The program, called the Assumption Access Promise, is scheduled to continue for each student through graduation.
Holy Cross announced this month full tuition grants for students whose families earn $100,000 or less and have no more than reasonable assets.
“It’s part of our mission,” said Cornell LeSane, Holy Cross vice provost for enrollment management. “So we hold firmly to the Jesuit belief that education should be accessible to all.”
Anna Maria College in Paxton announced on Oct. 26 that the Anna Maria Access Scholarship (AMAS) will cover tuition and many fees free for incoming freshmen and transfer students from New England who live on campus and who are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant for the 2025-26 academic year.
“Anna Maria College is always seeking new ways to expand access to higher education,” said Hugh Drummond, Anna Maria vice president for external relations and chief communications officer. “This is one way we advance our mission and the legacy of our foundresses – the Sisters of St. Anne – who started Anna Maria in 1946 to give area women access to college.”
Assumption University
Mr. Boffi believes Catholic institutions have the responsibility to reach out to low income families.
“We very much see that serving those less fortunate than us,” he said, “is a Christian and Catholic ideal that’s been part of the Assumption way of life since our very beginnings.”
Mr. Boffi pointed out that Assumption began as a college for French-Canadian immigrants who weren’t allowed to attend other area schools.
“So helping first generation students is at the core of who Assumption is,” he said, “and being a Catholic school doing the right thing for the poor among us is certainly a big part of why we felt like this was the right thing to do.”
Mr. Boffi said the Assumption Access Promise fits into the university’s 10-year strategic vision to provide Assumption’s Catholic, liberal arts education to anyone who wants it and to grow enrollment and philanthropic reach.
Federal Pell Grants are designed to assist students from low-income families with the cost of college. For the current school year, a student from a family of four earning up to $54,500 in adjusted gross income is eligible for the maximum Federal Pell Grant of $7,395. Beginning next year, Federal Pell Grant awards will be applied toward Assumption’s free tuition program.
Mr. Boffi said donors and benefactors as well as recent growth in enrollment will help fund this tuition-free program. Assumption’s enrollment dropped during the pandemic, but has risen the past couple of years. The college has 1,705 full-time undergraduate students, two-thirds of whom are from Massachusetts.
The freshmen class of 500 students is up 34 percent from two years ago. The college’s strategic plan calls for enrollment to continue to increase significantly over the next few years.
“Our campus is thriving,” Mr. Boffi said. “Our students are happy. We’re getting back to pre-Covid level enrollments.”
Mr. Boffi said Assumption draws a lot of students from Worcester County, but the college hopes the free tuition program will attract more students from the rest of the state.
Mr. Boffi said he expects 20-25 percent of the 2025-26 freshman class will be eligible for the free tuition program.
The cost to attend Assumption during the 2024-25 school year is $70,820, including books, fees and room and board. Tuition is $50,494. Mr. Boffi said those costs will increase slightly next year, but how much hasn’t been announced yet.
Mr. Boffi pointed out that students who receive free tuition will be eligible for other scholarship aid, work study and loans as well.
Assumption has also begun the AU Early Financial Aid initiative that will allow prospective students and families to secure financial aid offers sooner, even before the
2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is released in December. The Department of Education delayed releasing the FAFSA this year so Assumption is allowing families to submit last year’s FAFSA and receive early financial aid offers. The financial aid offer will be honored even if the award based on the 2025-26 FAFSA differs.
Mr. Boffi said current Assumption students will not be eligible for the free tuition program, but he said Assumption already awards more than $50 million in scholarships and grants each year to 99 percent of its students.'
Mr. Boffi believes the cost of Assumption’s education is well worth it. He pointed out that the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University in 2022 ranked Assumption in the top six percent in lifetime return on investment among the 4,500 colleges and universities in the U.S.
The Assumption 2023 graduating class had an average of a little more than $33,000 in debt, including $24,000 in federal debt. That was below the national average of $42,095 for a student who attended a private, nonprofit institution.
Mr. Boffi explained that college is expensive in large part because the Federal Pell Grant awards a much smaller percentage of tuition costs than it did 30 or 40 years ago. He also pointed out the largest expense is payroll for the highly educated and skilled faculty and other vital staff members.
College of the Holy Cross
Since the 2022-23 academic year, Holy Cross has offered free tuition for students from families with income of $75,000 or less and will expand that offer to students from families with income of $100,000 or less. Mr. LeSane said current students, in addition to incoming freshmen in 2024-25, will be eligible for the free tuition program if their families earn $100,000 or less and they’re not in possession of more than reasonable assets, such as real estate and investments.
Mr. LeSane said it was too soon to determine the percentage of Holy Cross students who will receive free tuition.
Mr. LeSane said Holy Cross does not have to dip into its endowment of more than $1 billion to fund financial aid. He said nearly 82 percent of the financial aid budget is funded through federal and state aid, donations and other external resources.
“Holy Cross is regularly one of the top 10 institutions in the country,” Mr. LeSane said, “for alumni participation each year.”
During the 2023-2024 school year the college provided $76.5 million in financial aid. Sixty-five percent of students receive need-based grants.
For the 2024-25 academic year, tuition at Holy Cross is $63,650 and the total cost to attend Holy Cross, including room, board, books and fees, is $83,320. Mr. LeSane said he does not know yet how much those costs will increase next year.
Holy Cross has an enrollment of 3,219 students and for the class of 2024, the average debt was $19,850.
“It’s extremely expensive to run a college,” Mr. LeSane said. “In most cases, it’s actually much more expensive to run an institution than what the actual costs are. … than what students are actually paying.”
Despite its high cost, Holy Cross remains a popular and well respected college. Only 18 percent of applicants were accepted for the class of 2028.
Mr. LeSane pointed out that Holy Cross has no graduate programs so all faculty and resources are geared towards the undergraduates.
Being a Division 1 college in athletics is also a drawing card, Mr. LeSane explained.
Holy Cross is one of less than 100 colleges in the nation that meet 100 percent of each admitted student’s demonstrated financial need.
“We talk a lot about people for and with others,” he said. “Care for the whole person. So not just the care of how you’re doing from an academic standpoint, but from a spiritual, mental standpoint as well.”
Anna Maria College
Mr. Drummond said when students and families experienced difficulty with the flawed FASFA rollout last year, Anna Maria’s financial aid and enrollment teams provided personalized financial aid guidance, held information sessions and issued preliminary aid offers before having all the FASFA information.
“This new scholarship is an extension of those efforts,” he said. “For this scholarship, we wanted to expand the opportunity beyond Massachusetts to all of New England’s students.”
The AMAS will be covered by grant and scholarship aid from institutional, federal, state, and private sources.
It costs $61,762 to attend Anna Maria and live on campus. Tuition is $41,744. The $17,191 charge for housing and meals is not included in this scholarship.
Anna Maria students must complete the FAFSA to determine if they are eligible to receive a Federal Pell Grant.
There is no GPA minimum for initial consideration for the AMAS.
Even before this tuition scholarship was formed, all Anna Maria students received financial aid. Every student is eligible for the college’s merit scholarship, which awards up to $27,500 annually with additional grant opportunities available.
Anna Maria offers more than 40 scholarships and grant programs. In 2023, Anna Maria provided $21,837,527 in institutional aid to students and $187,950 in endowed scholarships.
Anna Maria students will graduate in 2025 with an average debt of $37,000.
Based on last year’s enrollment numbers, Mr. Drummond said the college expects about a quarter of the incoming class to be eligible for free tuition.
“We can afford it by leveraging sources of external funding,” Mr. Drummond said, “and focusing on providing support to students who need it most with our institutional expenditures.”
