Carolina Covenant

Overview

The Carolina Covenant is a groundbreaking initiative that gives the children of low-income families an opportunity to attend Carolina—without borrowing a penny. The Carolina Covenant enables low-income students to come to Carolina and graduate debt-free if they work on campus 10 to 12 hours a week in Federal Work-Study jobs during their four years here. Carolina was the first public university in America to launch such an initiative.

Students who qualify for the Carolina Covenant program are first admitted to the University solely on the basis of their academic qualifications. Only after they are admitted to the University is their financial need assessed and their status as a Covenant Scholar determined. Their family income must be less than 200 percent of federal poverty guidelines (indexed by family size).

 

The Need

It’s no secret that a college education holds the key to a better future. According to the CollegeBoard, the typical bachelor’s degree recipient can expect to earn about 65 percent more during a 40-year working life than the typical high school graduate earns over the same period.

It’s also no secret that the ever-rising price tag for a college education threatens to overwhelm the resources of many low-income families, making that key to a better future more difficult to grasp. This is true even for public U.S. universities. The CollegeBoard reports that, for published accounts, tuition and fees at these schools has climbed by an average of 3.4 percent each year over the past decade, adjusted for inflation.

Look no further than the Covenant itself to see the impact of rising college costs: Enrollment in the program has grown from 224 to 724.

The message is clear: Bright, hardworking young people from impoverished backgrounds need more and more financial help to fulfill their dream of going to college, and there are more and more of them.