Making Good on Bucky’s Tuition Promise

Jeff Miller

A flagship financial aid program at UW–Madison that provides generous support to in-state students from low- to moderate-income families increases student retention by several percentage points, according to new research.

The study, scheduled for publication in the Peabody Journal of Education, is the first to assess the long-term outcomes of Bucky’s Tuition Promise, which began in 2018.

Bucky’s Tuition Promise guarantees four years of tuition and segregated fees for any incoming freshman from Wisconsin whose family’s annual household adjusted
gross income is $65,000 or less. Transfer students can qualify for up to two years.

Prior research has shown that being eligible for Bucky’s Tuition Promise increases the probability that a lower-income student from Wisconsin will accept an enrollment
offer from UW–Madison. The new study looks at what happens to the students once they arrive on campus.

“We wanted to make sure that this program wasn’t just bringing students to campus but that those students went on to have successful college careers here,” says Amberly Dziesinski, the study’s author and a research analyst in the UW’s Student Success through Applied Research Lab.

Comparing students closest to either side of the income eligibility threshold, Dziesinski found that the retention rate going into the second year for Bucky’s Tuition Promise students close to the eligibility threshold was 96.6 percent, compared to 93.4 percent for the control group of ineligible students.

The difference of three percentage points is significant, she says, because the UW’s retention rates are already very high across the board.

Published in the Fall 2025 issue