Qualifying Texas students whose families make $100,000 or less will be able to get free tuition at the University of North Texas at Dallas.
Students must be Texas residents, be a graduate of a high school in the state and come from a family with a total income of $100,000 or less. They also must be eligible for the Pell Grant and priority TEXAS Grant funding. The program will cover four years of tuition and fees.
“This is the transformative power of higher education: to transform students by empowering them through education to strengthen their communities,” said UNT Dallas President Warren von Eschenbach, who announced the free tuition program at his investiture Friday. “For this reason, UNT Dallas remains committed to providing access to those for whom higher education has historically been out of reach.”
The new president, who laid out his vision for the young school to be the “leading public regional university in southern Dallas, Ellis County and beyond,” said the program would ensure that UNT Dallas students continue to graduate with little debt. UNT Dallas is among the Texas universities with the lowest percentage of graduates in debt at 44%, according to 2024 data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Tuition and fees at the public university cost $10,097 for the 2024-25 school year, according to UNT Dallas’ website. The southern Dallas university serves around 3,500 students, 70% of whom are the first in their family to go to college.
In 2023, over 300 first-year UNT Dallas students received a Pell Grant, a federal scholarship for students who have exceptional financial need, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Efforts to give more Texans access to higher education comes amid state initiatives aimed at increasing post-secondary credentials. Texas is on track to have more than 1.8 million job openings annually between 2022 and 2032, many of which will require education beyond high school, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
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