Duke and others are making college more affordable. NC can, too | Opinion

Duke University announced this week that it will offer free tuition to undergraduate students from North Carolina and South Carolina with family incomes of $150,000 or less. The university will provide additional financial assistance for housing, meals and some campus expenses to those with family incomes below $65,000. About 340 currently enrolled undergraduate students are expected to benefit in the next academic year.

It’s a commendable step toward making college more affordable, and it will be meaningful for North and South Carolinians as well as for Duke itself.

Duke has amassed somewhat of a reputation as an elite private institution filled mostly with students whose families can afford its costly tuition. There’s a degree of truth to that reputation. Tuition is costly: A semester at Duke will run you upwards of $31,000, and that’s excluding campus fees, housing, meals and other expenses that make college even more cost-prohibitive for many. Also, according to data from The New York Times, the median family income of a Duke student is $186,700, and about 69% of students come from families at the top 20% of the income distribution. About a fifth of Duke students come from families in the top 1% — a higher proportion than almost any other college in North Carolina. By removing one of the biggest barriers of entry for prospective low- and middle-income students — the cost — Duke can add more diversity to its student body.

This may be a big deal for North Carolina, but Duke is certainly not the first institution to implement a tuition program like this. Stanford University covers tuition, room and board for students with family incomes of less than $100,000, though there is an expected student contribution of several thousand dollars. At Princeton University, more than a quarter of the undergraduate student body receives aid covering full tuition, room and board, thanks to financial aid policies that provide support to the highest-need students.

But other North Carolina colleges and universities — both public and private — should follow in Duke’s footsteps.

To be fair, the UNC System has taken some steps toward affordability, and tuition remains relatively affordable compared to many peer institutions. Several years ago, North Carolina launched the N.C. Promise program, which caps in-state tuition at certain UNC System schools at just $500. Currently, four of the UNC System’s 16 universities participate in the program, but its most prestigious institutions do not.

The same New York Times data shows that the share of low-income students at UNC-Chapel Hill is even lower than at Duke, and about 60% of students come from families at the top 20% of the income distribution.

UNC-Chapel Hill does have the Carolina Covenant program, which helps students from families at or below 200% of federal poverty guidelines graduate from college debt-free. But there is more that the UNC System and North Carolina can do to make college more affordable for not just low-income students, but middle-income students, too.

Just look at what other states are doing. Georgia, for example, has scholarship programs that subsidizes tuition for in-state residents who attend one of Georgia’s public universities and meet certain academic eligibility requirements. For many students, those scholarships can cover as much as 90% to 100% of tuition costs.

The University of California system covers full tuition and fees for in-state students whose total family income is less than $80,000, and the University of Virginia announced a similar program in 2018. These sorts of programs go a long way toward making college an option for not just low-income students, but middle-income students, too. That’s important, because a $200,000 degree can be expensive even for families who are able to make ends meet.

Colleges and universities want to attract the best and brightest, but too often they only attract the students who can afford the cost of attendance. Oftentimes, students will choose the school that offers the best scholarships and financial aid — and if that’s Duke and not UNC-Chapel Hill, public universities lose their edge in that competition.

North Carolina prides itself on having one of the best public university systems in the country, and it has the opportunity to be a leader in an even more important way — by demonstrating a strong commitment to making college affordable for everyone.