University of Minnesota Chips in With More Financial Aid for Low-Income Students

Blacks are only 4.3 percent of the student body at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. But because there are nearly 33,000 undergraduate students on this campus, there is a solid group of more than 1,400 black students at the university.  

Many of these black students may be receiving a larger allocation of financial aid under a new policy passed by the state’s board of regents. Under Minnesota’s Founders Opportunity Program, freshman students from families with incomes under $50,000 have their full tuition and fees paid for by grants from the university after all other federal scholarship grants are exhausted. Now the board of regents is extending this program to all students who transfer into the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. More than one quarter of all students at the university are transfer students who enter as juniors after completing studies at a community college.

The university expects that the new program will cost about $22 million a year and will benefit 4,500 students of all races.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.