Arizona State University is doing away with tuition costs in its business school program.
The college, which is enrolling 86 first-year students this year, will offer 120 full MBA scholarships for the class starting in fall 2016. Tuition currently costs $54,000 for in-state students and $90,000 for international students.
The aim of the initiative is to pull in a more diverse set of business students who might enter fields besides finance, tech, or manufacturing. The change will also make the school more accessible to people from less affluent backgrounds.
“This is risk-taking,” Amy Hillman, the business school’s dean, told Bloomberg. “The more conservative thing would have been to name some scholarships that look for a specific type of applicant, but our fear was that we wouldn’t have the kind of impact we’re able to have with this.”
The scholarships are funded by a $50 million donation from the real-estate mogul William Carey, whom the business school is named after.