The Hope + Access campaign aims to raise $40 million for need-based financial aid, ensuring that the life-changing education that Holy Cross provides is available and accessible to all admitted students.
Our Profound Responsibility – Ensuring an Equal Chance at Success
As a highly selective, Jesuit, undergraduate, liberal arts college, we are unique in higher education. We are focused on transforming lives, rising above mediocrity and making a better world. To achieve this goal, we offer a highly personalized, academically rigorous education with a firm moral and spiritual foundation.
This is an expensive endeavor, one that we also know is deeply worthwhile. We are committed to guiding and inspiring our students to pursue the magis, to discover their best selves and to transform the world through the service of neighbor — just as the Jesuits have done for generations.
We believe that it is our profound responsibility to ensure that all admitted students have the opportunity to attend Holy Cross and experience this education, regardless of their financial means. Meeting 100 percent of the demonstrated need of accepted students, as calculated according to nationally recognized financial aid criteria, remains central to our mission.
Therefore, the Campaign for Hope and Access aims to raise $40 million for need-based financial aid. The campaign will run from January 2021 to June 2022, and serve to ensure that our transformational educational experience remains affordable and accessible to all.
Why Now
We are living in a moment unlike any other — reckoning with a pandemic, economic instability, and racial injustice and inequity. Families are concerned about paying next month’s bills. Many have lost a job or are worried about losing one. The need for a Holy Cross education — one that is accessible to all qualified students no matter their socioeconomic status — has never been more relevant.
And yet the cost of this education is close to being out of reach for families of many income levels. As a Jesuit institution, we have always linked our unique teaching to the service of those in need. Out of a commitment to faith and justice, we have always been committed to the purposeful formation of individuals in the face of changing social conditions.
This is why financial aid remains the College’s highest philanthropic priority.
A Holy Cross education propels students to be the essential leaders and change agents that the world needs. The hope offered by this education should not entail insurmountable economic challenge and debt.
Join us. Live our purpose. Share our hope. Support the Campaign for Hope and Access today.
Financial Aid By the Numbers
$68 million spent on financial aid in 2020:
- $1.1 million (1%) was provided by targeted private gifts and federal grants.
- $9.3 million (14%) was provided by the endowment.
- $57.1 million (85%) was provided by the College, primarily through tuition and fees.
$40 million raised during this campaign will ensure Holy Cross can continue to meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated need.