The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is expanding the number of students who will qualify for free tuition as higher education institutions are still struggling with declining enrollment.

In a statement on Wednesday, MIT said undergraduate students with family incomes less than $200,000 can attend the university tuition-free beginning in the fall of 2025. Those whose family income is less than $100,000 will not have to pay for tuition, books, housing, dining, or any other fees.

The prestigious university previously limited tuition-free attendance to families making less than $140,000. And the cap to attend the university without any fees was $75,000.

The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said, “The cost of college is a real concern for families across the board, and we’re determined to make this transformative educational experience available to the most talented students, whatever their financial circumstances. So, to every student out there who dreams of coming to MIT: Don’t let concerns about cost stand in your way.”

MIT says it is able to offer “this level of financial aid” due to the “generous gifts” that make up its endowment. 

The expansion of who can qualify for free tuition comes as colleges around America are seeing lower enrollment rates in recent years. In 2010, there were 18.1 million undergraduate students, and in 2021 there were 15.4 million. This fall semester marked the first decline in freshmen enrolling in colleges since 2020. 

Some of the decrease has been blamed on lower birthrates and a lower population of college-aged students compared to previous years. Another factor is concern that colleges and universities are hostile to conservative ideology or what are considered heterodox ideas and indoctrinate students with left-wing views. Meanwhile, Jewish students have been shunning Ivy League universities amid a rise in antisemitism on college campuses after the October 7 attack on Israel.

Yet another reason for college enrollment dropping is the rising cost of attendance and the debt students take on to attend, which is leading many students to either stop attending or skip college altogether as they view education as not worth the cost.

Since 1980, the cost of attending college has soared 155 percent, the National Center for Education Statistics reports. And much of that increase is due to higher administrative costs. The Progressive Policy Institute says there are three times the number of administrators on college campuses than instructors. 

While the cost of tuition has soared, leading students to take out larger loans, many colleges have endowments worth billions that critics say could be used to help students. In 2023, Harvard had an endowment of $51 billion, Yale’s endowment was more than $41 billion, and Princeton’s endowment was around  $36 billion. 

In 2017, the Institute for Higher Education Policy argued private colleges should “be required to spend at the 5 percent that private foundations are required to spend on charitable donations each year, and invest those dollars in making their colleges more affordable and accessible for low-income students.”

However, the idea of using endowment funds, as MIT and Princeton are doing, to make higher education more affordable may not be feasible for every college as some may have restrictions on how they can spend their endowment funds, and others simply may not have large endowments.