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Friday, Aug 28, 2026

Did undocumented students at ASU receive $10.5 million in reduced tuition last year? 

Molly Bohannon, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

The $10.5 million cited by the Department of Justice in its lawsuit against Arizona does not represent tuition savings for undocumented students in a single year or semester. It is based on a calculation using three years of data.

The DOJ cited the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting’s investigation on Proposition 308, which offers in-state tuition to graduates of Arizona high schools if they attended for at least two years, regardless of their immigration status. 

AZCIR reported that 432 students received in-state tuition through Prop. 308 at Arizona State University from spring 2023 through fall 2025. 

The DOJ treated those 432 students as though they represented a single semester, then multiplied that figure by $24,000, the difference between ASU’s in-state and out-of-state tuition rates. The lawsuit incorrectly characterized the resulting $10.5 million as tuition reductions for the fall 2025 semester.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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