USC To Offer Free Tuition To Undergrads From Families Making Under $80K
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – The University of Southern California will begin offering free undergraduate tuition to incoming students from families with lower incomes.
The university announced Thursday that undergrad students who come from families with an annual gross income of $80,000 or less will receive free tuition.
Furthermore, if a family owns a home, the equity will not count against the financial aid evaluation, the school said.
To achieve this, USC will increase the amount of undergrad financial aid by $30 million. The school estimates that about one-third of its incoming freshman class will benefit from the increase.
"We're opening the door wider to make a USC education possible for talented students from all walks of life," USC President Carol Folt said in a statement.
USC tuition is currently about $57,000 a year.
"While the impression is there's a lot of wealthy students on campus, I think most students at the end of the day are on some type of financial aid, or loans of some sort," USC student Trenton Stone told CBS2.
The offer is expected to help about 4,000 students, or approximately one-third of the incoming class.
Several Ivy League schools have similar offers. Princeton offers free tuition to families making under $160,000. Harvard offers free tuition to families making under $65,000.
This comes as USC looks to move on from a series of scandals which have rocked the university over the past few years.
In March of 2019, USC was one of the colleges at the center of a scandal in which the FBI charged about 50 people — including 35 parents and nine coaches — in a massive bribery scheme in which wealthy families paid millions to Newport Beach businessman Rick Singer to help their children cheat on standardized tests and bribe test administrators and college coaches to help get their kids into top universities.
Among those indicted was actress Lori Loughlin, who was charged with paying $500,000 to get her two daughters into USC as members of the crew team, even though neither had ever rowed crew.
Multiple USC coaches and athletics department officials were implicated. Former head women's soccer coach Ali Khosroshahin and assistant coach Laura Janke have since pleaded guilty, while USC Athletic Direcot Lynn Swann abruptly resigned last September.
In June of 2019, longtime former USC gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall, who was accused by more than 400 female patients of molestation over a period of several decades, was arrested on sexual abuse charges.
n August of 2018, USC revealed that it had hired and fired former California Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas as a professor. USC asked the U.S. Attorney's Office to conduct a criminal investigation into a suspicious $100,000 donation from a campaign fund controlled by his father, L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. The 30-year-old Sebastian Ridley-Thomas was hired by USC as a professor despite not having a graduate degree.
In April 2016, Carmen Puliafito stepped down as dean of the USC Keck School of Medicine after it was revealed he had partied with underage girls and provided drugs to his girlfriend. The California medical board later ordered Puliafito be stripped of his license to practice medicine.
In November 2016, Dr. Rohit Varma, a noted ophthalmologist, was named dean to replace Puliafito. However, in October 2017, he also resigned amid a report that 15 years prior, USC reached a financial settlement with a female researcher who accused him of sexual harassment.
