On Sept. 3, Macalester College announced the Macalester Tuition Promise. True to its name, the initiative promises a full-tuition scholarship to all admitted domestic students with a household income of less than $100,000 annually, starting with next year’s class of 2030.
Macalester has long held a commitment to meet 100 percent of demonstrated financial need, a commitment that Assistant Vice President of Admissions and Financial Aid Brian Lindeman ’89 estimates it shares with around 70 other colleges nationwide. With this new initiative, it will now join a coalition of just 20-30 U.S. colleges that have made similar tuition promises.
On its website, Macalester’s financial aid office states that the policy “is designed to provide increased transparency early in the college search process,” a sentiment that Lindeman echoed in an interview with The Mac Weekly.
“We’re trying to get a short, easy message out there to students toward the beginning of their college selection process, before they start to filter out colleges based on assumptions about what it would cost,” Lindeman said.
While many colleges, including Macalester, have financial aid calculators that can help families estimate their net cost, “a lot of people don’t know they’re out there at all, and they’re not super easy to use,” according to Lindeman. He emphasized that this is especially common for students who are leading the financial aid process themselves and may not have information about their family’s financial situation or for families going through the process for the first time.
Vice President of Admissions and Financial Aid Jeff Allen described a similar vision behind the Macalester Tuition Promise. He views the move as “the continuation of many new policies and initiatives which we hope are helping to reduce the barriers and the complexity of the admissions and financial aid processes,” rather than a significant change in existing financial aid policy.
While admitted students already know of Macalester’s existing commitment to meet 100 percent of demonstrated need, Allen believes that this is “just a simpler way to say that for some students.”
To a follow up question about the timing of the announcement, Allen responded, “why not now?”
Families looking at Macalester for their students have what Allen calls “a long and lengthy process” before they can fully know what higher education will cost.
“Year after year after year, we see how challenging that is for families,” Allen said.
Allen and his colleagues wondered if “there was a better way to communicate the Macalester commitment to families who have an income below $100,000.”
Macalester’s new promise comes as U.S. colleges in recent years have shown an increased commitment to making admissions processes more accessible for students and their families. This trend is exemplified by a rise in test optional admissions policies and the removal of application fees, both moves Macalester made in 2020.
“We have to tip our hat to some other institutions that have done this already. University of Minnesota has the North Star promise, Brandeis, St. Olaf – a lot of other peer institutions have had these promise programs for the last few years,” Lindeman said.
For some Macalester students, the question “why now” is more than a question of marketing and policy choices. Among students already enrolled, 70 percent currently qualify for need-based financial aid, and 20 percent fall into what the financial aid office calls the “highest-need category.”
Acknowledging this, Lindeman wants to offer students reassurance that the promise is more explicit than Macalester’s previous financial aid commitments.
“The reality is that almost all of our students who are in this financial situation are already receiving grants and scholarships that are equal to tuition or greater than that,” Lindeman said.
When considering the implications of the policy, Lindeman says, his colleagues at the financial aid office evaluated the data from families making under $100,000 a year at Macalester and asked, “can we make this statement without really needing a huge infusion of new financial aid dollars? And that’s what we found.”
“The actual practical reality for students who would receive this promise will not be too different,” Allen said.
“This is really an effort to help us build new relationships and new partnerships and new opportunities,” Allen continued, in reference to high school counseling offices in underserved school districts.
For both Lindeman and Allen, the commitment fosters a hope that students across the U.S. beginning the college application process will see this promise as a message that Macalester is still a feasible financial option for them.
“Our dream scenario is that every student who is worried about their family’s ability to pay our tuition becomes aware of this and feels like they at least have maybe not a green light to consider Macalester all the way through, but at least a yellow light so that they’ll keep working toward learning exactly what financial aid they qualify for — that’s the goal,” Lindeman said.
