College of Education and Behavioral Sciences News

Western Kentucky University continues to make the WKU Experience accessible and affordable with three additional changes to its freshman scholarship program for fall 2021.

The WKU Family Scholarship provides in-state tuition to first-time, full-time freshmen whose parents or grandparents are WKU graduates no matter where they live. In the past, those students were eligible for the Tuition Incentive Program and the new program will further reduce the cost of tuition by about 22 percent.

The WKU Border State Scholarship provides in-state tuition to first-time, full-time freshmen from the seven states that border Kentucky: Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. WKU currently has almost 3,000 students from those states, an increase of 22 percent over the past seven years.

WKU has also retooled its Tuition Incentive Program, which will reduce out-of-state tuition by nearly half for non-resident first-time, full-time freshmen with a 3.0 high school GPA or who qualify for any other scholarship award.

In all cases students can stack scholarships to these awards.

This is the latest in a series of enhancements to WKU’s scholarship program that began last year with revised guidelines and removal of the ACT requirement from almost all merit-based and targeted academic scholarships. Those revisions helped fuel an increase of almost 450 students in this fall’s freshman class and increased the percentage of freshmen receiving scholarship aid from 39 percent to 84 percent.

“A college education is important to not only making a good living, but making a good life,” WKU President Timothy C. Caboni said. “Education is also key to the economic well-being of our communities. By providing an accessible and affordable college degree opportunity, we expand the talent pipeline that will fuel the future workforce for our broader region.”

Ethan Logan, WKU’s Vice President of Enrollment and Student Experience, said the enhancements are part of an intentional program to increase access and opportunity to the WKU Experience.

“Last week, we focused on our accessibility and promise to the support of Kentucky students and their goals of achievement in higher education,” Dr. Logan said. “Today, we add to this paradigm of access and opportunity to our neighboring communities just across the state lines, our sought-after students across the United States, and our commitment to our alumni and the next generation of Hilltoppers across the globe.”

Contact: Bob Skipper, (270) 745-4295