Johns Hopkins University To Go Tuition-Free For Eligible Undergraduates

Undergraduates from families with annual income of less than $200,000 will be able to attend Johns Hopkins University tuition-free beginning in the 2026-27 academic year.

With Thursday’s announcement, Hopkins becomes the latest major university to announce a free tuition program for undergraduates. The expansion of its financial aid will also allow the university to give enough assistance to students from families earning up to $100,000 to cover their cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses, allowing them to attend Hopkins with a $0 parent contribution. According to the press release, this means students from most American families, including those earning above the national median household income of $87,730, would be able to attend Hopkins at no expense.

The new aid levels will go into effect for eligible current students in the spring 2026 semester and for new, incoming students next fall for the 2026-2027 academic year. The offer applies to undergraduate students at the Homewood campus, home to the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and its Whiting School of Engineering.

In a message to the campus community, Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels credited the $1.8 billion gift from alumnus Michael Bloomberg in 2018 with allowing the university to establish “one of the most competitive undergraduate financial aid programs in the country.” In the seven years since the gift, Daniels said the percentage of Pell Grant-eligible, or limited-income, students attending Hopkins rose from 15.4% in 2018 to 24.1% in 2025.

In the years following the Bloomberg donation, 1,200 other donors have contributed about $240 million for financial aid at Hopkins, making the enhanced program possible. In addition to the new financial commitments, Hopkins’ Tuition Promise provides that students from most families with incomes up to $250,000 will continue to qualify for significant financial, and some with annual incomes greater than $250,000 may also qualify, especially if they have multiple children in college at the same time.

Daniels urged the campus to “join us in sharing this significant news with all outstanding students who are interested in pursuing a Johns Hopkins education, and with their families who want to see them reap the lifelong benefits of higher education.”

In the increasingly competitive college admissions environment, a growing number of colleges and universities have announced free-tuition program for income-eligible undergraduates in the past year. Just in the past several weeks, the University of Utah, Smith College, Bryn Mawr College and the Stevens Institute of Technology each launched free tuition programs. In September, Wake Forest University, Emory University and The Ohio State University announced new free tuition programs for eligible undergraduates.

Once confined mostly to elite private universities with high sticker prices and large endowments, free tuition offers are becoming more common as institutions respond to criticisms that college has become too expensive, and the public’s confidence in the value of a college education has suffered a decline. With colleges and universities competing for what will become a smaller number of graduating high school seniors over the next decade and a half, more aggressive tuition discounting will become even more frequent.

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