Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

I saw a similar headline just today (albeit on a much smaller scale) for Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/carnegie-mellon-univ...

I feel like the timing is too close to be a coincidence—does anyone know if there's a link?

Maybe it has something to do with the incoming Trump administration and federal student loans. They seem to want to reduce government spending and may see federal student loans as waste, especially since some were forgiven. Maybe there is some amount of arm-twisting involved. Better for the universities to not mention any of that and appear altruistic.

The freshman class of MIT pays enough to cover all other students every year.

It's not really something new; most top universities like CMU already have a similar policy. MIT has had it as well, they just raised the threshold for qualification.