Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Wednesday that Badger Promise, a new financial aid program for low-income students, will be launching this fall.
The new program, Badger Promise, seeks to give first-generation in-state college students who transfer to UW-Madison a year of free tuition. Recipients must transfer from a two-year UW System school and have at least 54 college credits, among other requirements.
Blank added that Pell Grant-eligible students who are in the program may also get two years of free tuition, which she said effectively targets the university’s resources.
“A key part of our mission, and a top priority for me, is to expand access to Wisconsin students,” Blank said in a statement.
But not everyone is convinced that Badger Promise will make effective change for students who need financial aid the most.
Former UW-Madison student government representative Brooke Evans, a homeless, transfer alumni and prominent advocate, was critical of the program. She said Badger Promise does “only a fraction” of what a program called FASTrack does not do, but is otherwise redundant.
“It is underwhelming and insufficient and does not fill the gaps that currently exist,” Evans said. “Badger Promise is missing so many groups of students and provides no cost of attendance support and does not account for the fact that we as low-income, first-generation students, take five to six years to graduate.”
The university anticipates approximately 150 students will enroll in the program this fall, a number that Evans said is far too small. In addition, since the full year of tuition does not cover extra costs such as housing and textbooks, Evans said this hurts the students the program claims to be assisting.
Evans did say she was appreciative of the program trying to create a pathway for rural students, calling it “the program’s merit.” She and other activists and low-income students approached the chancellor to discuss how the program would look, and Evans called this “the half of the plan we tried to give her.”
UW-Madison has been working on the implementation plan for the program since February and will announce more details later in the month, McGlone said.
“UW-Madison is a proud part of the UW System,” McGlone said. “We believe expanding access to talented Wisconsin students benefits the entire system, students and their families, and employers.”
