More universities are capping tuition in response to new federal student loan limits.
Economist Preston Cooper at the American Enterprise Institute recently compiled a list of universities who are capping tuition or expanding financial aid. As of July 1, undergraduate and graduate students face new limits on the amount of taxpayer-subsidized students loans they can borrow as a result of a law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July 2025.
“After Congress passed the new limits, several universities have announced that they are reducing tuition or providing new scholarships for graduate students beginning this fall,” Cooper wrote on July 27 at AEIdeas. “Some have explicitly tied these decisions to the new loan caps, while others have simply announced the changes without deigning to credit the loan limits.”
These include Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, and Lewis & Clark College.
At Emory, “students in several graduate public health programs who applied by January 2026 and enroll full-time will receive a guaranteed $25,000 tuition scholarship,” Cooper wrote.
Lewis & Clark’s graduate school of education and counseling is offering scholarships to some of its students, saying it is “in direct response to the federal government’s divestment in higher education and the elimination of access to the Grad PLUS loan.”
“These institutions have seen the writing on the wall: the federal government will no longer automatically subsidize any price they choose to charge,” Cooper wrote.
He predicted further changes could be coming as legal battles over the limits play out in the courts.
Other universities, including the University of California Irvine and Santa Clara University’s law school have similarly capped tuition or offered financial aid in response to the One Big Beautiful Bill, as The College Fix previously reported.
MORE: ‘Expert’ says it’s ‘cruel’ to ask students to earn free food, bus passes, laptops
