Juilliard’s Master of Fine Arts in Acting program will become tuition free for students starting in fall 2024.

The four-year program will then be free in perpetuity thanks to $15 million in existing scholarship funding, as well as a matching challenge grant from theater producer and Juilliard trustee Stephanie P. McClelland and her husband, Carter McClelland, a major gift from theater producer John Gore and gifts from the Jacques and Margot W. Kohn Foundation and several estates. This follows other acting programs that have stopped charging tuition, including the Yale School of Drama, which became tuition free for all students in the school starting in 2021 after a $150 million gift from David Geffen.

Juilliard’s four-year Mfa program was founded by Jim Houghton in 2012, with the goal of broadening employment opportunities for students, and has always had its fourth year of the acting program tuition free, alongside a living stipend. That stipend will remain in place.