Closing the Gap: How Zero Tuition Works at Jacksonville College

By DAVID ERICKSON, PH.D.
President, Jacksonville College

For a hundred and twenty-seven years, Jacksonville College has stood for a straightforward idea: a young person’s future should never be decided by the size of a bank account. Launching our Zero Tuition program in Spring 2025 was a new way to put that idea into action. Yet it might sound like Jacksonville College is suddenly free for everyone. So, it’s worth explaining clearly, because everyone who supports this college deserves to know exactly what their giving makes possible.
 
WHAT "ZERO TUITION" ACTUALLY MEANS
Zero Tuition is what’s known in financial aid as a “last-dollar” program. How it works is pretty straightforward. A student first applies for every grant and scholarship available to them. That starts with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that enables qualifying students to receive Federal Pell Grants. If a student doesn’t qualify for a Pell Grant, often because their family’s income is above $100,000 per year, then they are also not eligible for Zero Tuition. The Pell Grant and other grants and scholarships, such as the Texas Equalization Grant, are applied to a student’s account first. Whatever still remains, the gap between what scholarships and grants pay and what tuition costs, Jacksonville College covers. The student’s balance for tuition reaches zero.
 
The initiative is built for students who need it most and who are doing their part to earn it. A qualifying student must be a Texas resident with demonstrated financial need (through the FAFSA). They must enroll full-time, at least 12 credit hours a semester, be working toward a degree and keep their grades up so they maintain satisfactory academic progress toward that degree. It also doesn’t cover everything. Books, housing, meals and summer or winter terms are the student’s own responsibility. Zero Tuition is a significant promise, but it is also a specific one.
 
WHERE THE MONEY ACTUALLY COMES FROM
The gap between a student’s aid and their tuition bill does not disappear on its own. Jacksonville College closes it out of the general fund, and the general fund is sustained, semester after semester, by annual giving. There is no massive endowment quietly doing this work in the background. It is the ongoing generosity of people who believe in this college, given year over year, that makes the promise of Zero Tuition possible for the next student and the one after that.
 
That gap is smaller than you might expect. For the typical student, last year Zero Tuition closed a gap of $728 a semester, or $1,455 a year. That made it the most efficient scholarship program the college offers. It also gives a sense for how little it takes to make a big impact on a young person’s future.
 
When you give to Jacksonville College, you are not giving to an abstraction. You are giving to the specific moment when a student’s financial aid runs short and the college’s own resources step in to finish the job. Zero Tuition only works because your giving is dependable. Our Zero Tuition promise is only as strong as the people standing behind it.
 
WHY THIS IS THE RIGHT INVESTMENT FOR JACKSONVILLE COLLEGE
Other institutions market themselves on new buildings and amenities. We choose to put our resources where we believe they change lives most directly: in the tuition bill of a student who is choosing between a brighter future with a Christian college education or a more challenging one without it. That is a values-based decision, and it is one you make possible.
 
Every gift to Jacksonville College is a vote for that decision. It tells a young person that the only thing standing between them and a degree, the ability to pay, has already been answered by a community that believed in their future before they ever set foot on campus. That is what Zero Tuition means in practice, and it is why sustaining it, year after year, is one of the most direct ways a gift to Jacksonville College can change a life.

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