We examine the empirical and interpretive basis of “Does free tuition promote equity in higher education? Impact on academic performance of low-income university students,” by Espinoza et al. (2025), who affirm that low-income recipients of free tuition showed superior academic performance compared to their peers who financed their studies through loans or no financial aid. Our reassessment of their data and conclusions shows that students benefiting from free tuition did not consistently outperform peers financed via other forms of financial aid across the years covered by the study. Moreover, we detected in their study a major category contamination, with varying rates of missing information for the criterion variable (GPA) by type of financial aid, limitations that are unacknowledged. Even if the issues of category contamination and missing data could be sorted out, the comparability of the study sample and the broader population of university students remain questionable. Thus, a cautionary note is required, since assertions of superior performance by free-tuition recipients are, at this point, unsupported.
