The University has joined over 100 institutions and adopted a  need-blind admission program, adopted a no-loan policy that will go into effect in fall 2024, and redoubled its “efforts to engage, support, and build pathways for students from small-town and rural America” through its Heartland Initiative. 

“WU/FUSED deserves the majority of the credit, along with a few former key administrators, for getting the momentum [for socioeconomic diversity] going,” Scotty Jacobs, WashU alumni and former Student Representative to the Board of Trustees, said. 

“Access Ain’t Inclusion.” This is a phrase popularized by Dr. Anthony Abraham Jack, an Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, in his book “Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students.” 

 “When I first started at Washington University in St. Louis, the idea of it becoming need-blind wasn’t even on the table,” said Lauren Chase, the former president of WU/Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (WU/FUSED). 

“I don’t doubt for one second that [WashU’s Pell-eligible] numbers would have improved as much if the New York Times had not blasted it as the worst in the country when it came to socioeconomic diversity,” James Murphy, deputy director of higher-education policy at Education Reform Now, said.  In 2014, the New York Times (NYT) […]

I felt like I needed to do the issue of socioeconomic diversity on campus justice by diving deep into the history of how we got here as an institution.

Like most historical moments, the move to adopt a need-blind system and improve WashU’s socioeconomic diversity numbers didn’t happen overnight.