Cleveland State University President Laura Bloomberg announced Friday a new, major commitment: free tuition for some Ohio students.
The "Cleveland State Commitment" program will kick off in fall 2027 for new, full-time Ohio students who come from households earning $125,000 or less annually. Those students must be a spring 2027 graduate with a 3.0 GPA. The program will cover eight semesters of tuition, but not the cost of room and board, books, or individual program fees.
"We say we want to be a national leader in offering or creating social and economic mobility opportunities for our students," Bloomberg said at a press conference. "That means that we budget and we allocate our resources and put our money where our mouth is. So, it's funded now through existing sources of our own funds and our philanthropic endowment funds that we are making available for this."
The university estimates a third of all future CSU students will be eligible for free tuition. Andrew Crawford, vice president of enrollment management, said the program will help a wide swath of students who are left out of other scholarship programs in Ohio. About 73% of Ohio households earn $125,000 or less, the university said in a news release.
"It's not a new idea," Crawford said. "Other institutions do this. But this is far and away the most bold, the most generous, and the one that is most highly focused on working Ohioans. It's hitting that middle class that the federal and state aid policies say don't have need. But those middle-income families would probably say there is need there, right?"
That includes parent Erin Hayes, whose son, Joseph, currently attends the Medina County Career Center.
"We (Hayes and her husband) saved money, we work hard, we've gotten to where we are in our careers, but the reality is we don't have enough saved to cover that tuition," Hayes said during the press conference. "We have a junior in college, we're already taking out student loans to get him through the next year and a half. So to get that call last week that said that Joe has an opportunity to have (free) tuition here, it just takes such a burden of stress off us."
Lashadd Thompson, a senior at John Hay High School in Cleveland, said free tuition at CSU will take a financial burden off of him and his family. His mother, Aaliyah Allen, said she and her husband worried how they would pay for his tuition.
"My son was like, 'Mom, I don't want to do the loans.' I'm like, 'well, baby, I don't know, we might need to. But mommy and dad is going to work their tail off to get you what you need. So try not to worry about that. Mommy just wants you to focus on school,'" she explained.
How will the university pay for it?
Bloomberg and Crawford said the university is projecting it will cost about $500,000 annually to pay for the Cleveland State Commitment.
But they quickly added that they expect the program to pay for itself as more students enroll, and as more students stick around to complete their degrees.
"We believe because of more housing contracts, room-and-board contracts, the fact that we're marketing this broadly as Cleveland State University, and we anticipate students on the margins are now going to select Cleveland State, it's going to drive up more net tuition revenue as a result of that," Crawford said.
Bloomberg said the university is leveraging other federal, state and local scholarships to make the program financially feasible. The commitment will only kick in after federal and state grants and scholarships are applied. The university will also try to raise additional funds to support the Cleveland State Commitment, Bloomberg added.
