Colleges eliminate loans and work-study employment

It started off with Williams College, a private liberal arts school that plans to eliminate loans and work-study employment from its financial aid packages and replace those with grants. This shift has been made due to increased public demand to make higher education affordable. 

According to the new policy, aid that students used to receive in the form of loans or through on-campus jobs will now come in the form of grant money that they do not have to repay. This initiative is a first of its kind in the US. The college expects its all-grant program to benefit roughly half of its undergraduate students and extend aid to middle-income families by about $35,000 over four years and lower-income families by about $16,000. The plan will cost the college about $6.75 million per year. Multiple students like Kai Cash recall how they were able to pay for their education solely on the basis of the financial package which consisted of work-study campus jobs and grants. If not, the pressure of a loan would have forced him to take up the highest paying job rather than explore and postgraduate fellowship and various employment opportunities. 

The new program also cancels work-study programs allowing students to now allocate that time to campus activity or other character-building exercises. 

Source: The Washington Post