Juilliard Announces Historic Campaign for a Tuition-Free Future

[NEW YORK, April 24, 2025] The Juilliard School today announced a transformative fundraising campaign aimed at eliminating tuition for all college students, making it the first conservatory with programs across music, dance, and drama to announce the intention of creating a tuition-free model.  

The campaign launches with $180 million in early commitments, including a collective pledge of $130 million from Juilliard’s Board of Trustees. This marks the beginning of the most ambitious affordability initiative in the school’s 120-year history.

“Financial barriers cannot be the determining factor in accessing Juilliard’s transformative education,” said Juilliard’s president, Damian Woetzel. “This campaign is all about matching extraordinary talent with extraordinary opportunity.”

Under Woetzel’s leadership, Juilliard has prioritized affordability, with more than 95 percent of current college students receiving some level of scholarship support. Starting in fall 2025, the number of tuition-free students will increase each year on a rolling basis, working toward a fully tuition-free model as fundraising milestones are achieved in the coming years. To reach this goal, Juilliard aims to raise a total of $550 million.

“This campaign represents a defining moment for Juilliard and for the future of the performing arts,” said Vincent Mai, the chair of Juilliard’s Board of Trustees. “The board’s collective pledge of $130 million reflects our shared belief that financial barriers should never stand in the way of exceptional talent. By making this commitment, we are reaffirming Juilliard’s role as a global leader in access, excellence, and artistic innovation.”

Juilliard has steadily expanded access through tuition-free and fully funded programs, including the Drama Division’s Master of Fine Arts in Acting; the Artist Diplomas in jazz, music performance, opera studies, playwriting, and string quartet studies; Doctor of Musical Arts; and Historical Performance. The Music Advancement Program (MAP), which serves students ages 8–17 from the New York area and is part of the Preparatory Division, is also tuition-free.

By reimagining access to a Juilliard education, the school seeks to redefine the standard for conservatories worldwide and invest more deeply in the next generation of performers, educators, creators, and leaders.

About  The Juilliard School 
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. The school’s mission is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors, composers, choreographers, and playwrights from around the world so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens. Led by President Damian Woetzel since 2018, Juilliard is guided in all its work by the core values of excellence; creativity; and equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB). Juilliard is committed to enrolling the most talented students regardless of their financial background.

Located at Lincoln Center in New York City, Juilliard offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in dance, drama (acting and playwriting), and music (classical, jazz, historical performance, and vocal arts). Currently more than 800 artists from 43 states and 44 countries and regions are enrolled in Juilliard’s College Division, where they appear in more than 700 annual performances in the school’s five theaters; at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and David Geffen halls and at Carnegie Hall; as well as at other venues around New York City, the country, and the world. The continuum of learning at Juilliard also includes nearly 400 students from elementary through high school enrolled in the Preparatory Division, including Pre-College and the Music Advancement Program (MAP), which serves students from diverse backgrounds often underrepresented in the classical music field. More than 800 students are enrolled in Juilliard Extension, the flagship continuing education program taught both in person and remotely by a dedicated faculty of performers, creators, and scholars. Beyond its New York campus, Juilliard is defining new directions in performing arts education for a range of learners and enthusiasts through a global K–12 educational curricula as well as precollege and graduate studies at The Tianjin Juilliard School in China.

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