Dartmouth College to eliminate loans for undergraduate students
HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — Dartmouth College is removing all federal and institutional loans from its undergraduate financial aid awards and replacing them with expanded scholarship grants, beginning with the current summer term, the school's president said.
Currently, Dartmouth undergraduates from families with an annual income of $125,000 or less who possess typical assets are offered need-based aid without a required loan component.
Dartmouth is now removing the loan requirement for undergraduates from families with annual income of more than $125,000 who receive need-based financial aid. This will decrease the debt burden for hundreds of middle-income Dartmouth students and their families by an average of $22,000 over four years, the school said in a news release Monday.
A fundraising effort that began in 2018 called The Call to Lead has deepened Dartmouth's commitment to make a college education accessible and affordable for the most promising and talented students from around the world and from all economic backgrounds, President Philip Hanlon said.
More than 65 families supported the campaign goal to eliminate loan requirements from Dartmouth's undergraduate financial aid awards, committing more than $80 million in gifts to the endowment.
Dartmouth is joining Ivy League peers Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University in adopting no-loan policies, The Dartmouth newspaper reported.