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As has been mentioned here in the past, there are a growing number of Colleges and Universities trying to find ways to help ease the financial burdens on their students after graduation. Several have decided to do away entirely with student loans, replacing them instead with grants and scholarships.

Tufts University is now joining in this growing trend, as they recently announced a new Loan Repayment Program. While this program isn’t designed to take the place of loans in financial aid packages (something the University is beginning to do with the class of 2011), it is aimed to help alleviate student’s debt and promote the Tufts mission of “active citizenship.”

According to Tufts President Lawrence Bacow:

“Every student who graduates with a loan worries about how to pay it off. We would like alumni to be able to pursue their passions—to do what they really want to do—without being unduly focused on the need to retire a student loan. It is especially appropriate for Tufts to make this commitment, since as an institution we seek to encourage a spirit of public service in our students.”

Therefore, the new Tufts Loan Repayment Assistance Program aims to give financial awards to graduates who are working in non-profit or public service areas, or those areas that “promote the public good.”

This is great news for both current Tufts students and alumni, but also is a huge boost for the growing trend of institutions taking steps to help reduce the cost of education and the burden of debt. Kudos to Tufts for this great new program, I only wish it had been in effect a year earlier for my own sake.

To read more on this program, please read the Tufts Journal article entitled: In The Public Interest. You may or may not find a quote from yours truly in there as well.

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