WATERVILLE -- Colby College made headlines last fall when it announced a plan to replace loans with grants for students from Maine who receive financial aid from the college.

Now the liberal arts college is joining a select group of colleges extending the offer to qualified students no matter where they're from.

Grant aid, unlike student loans, is money that does not have to be repaid.

"Where this is coming from," Colby spokesman Stephen Collins said, "is from a sense of obligation on the part of the institution. With the comprehensive fee increasing as it is to $46,100 this year, we needed to make that commitment to access.

"In other words, we are making sure Colby is open to as broad a range of students as possible, as well as making it affordable, so that the students who come here don't graduate with a burdensome debt."

Colby's new financial aid policy represents a commitment of $1.5 million per year, according to the college.

Colby President William D. "Bro" Adams made the announcement about enhanced financial aid a day after Bowdoin College made public a similar plan for its campus.

Collins said Colby's decision was long in the making and not a rapid response to Bowdoin's announcement. Bowdoin's comprehensive fee is $46,260.

"I can't say that the Bowdoin decision had no influence," he said, "but we started this with the Maine students in the fall, and the (Colby) Board (of Trustees) was considering a variety of initiatives related to access and affordability going into their Jan. 18 meeting."

That meeting, one of four gatherings the board has each year, took place in Boston.

Bowdoin College, moreover, said it had no foreknowledge of Colby's plan to replace loans with grant aid for all students, Bowdoin spokesman Scott Hood said.

"It is purely coincidental," he said of the timing of Bowdoin's announcement, " that it happened the way it did -- at least from our point of view."

Hood said Bowdoin had the same concerns as Colby regarding affordability, access and student debt level at graduation.

"Bowdoin felt it was time to do something like this," he said, "with the comprehensive fee approaching $50,000 a year."

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Williams, Pomona, Amherst, Dartmouth and Swarthmore are other colleges or universities that have eliminated loan aid in favor of grants.

Dartmouth's financial aid policy, announced this week, includes free tuition for students who come from families with annual incomes below $75,000.

Both Colby and Bowdoin cited endowment growth as a major factor in giving each college the financial means to extend more grant aid.

Bowdoin's endowment -- a fund largely built on contributions from alumni and friends of the college -- is $828 million, while Colby's is $599 million as of June 30.

Collins said about two-thirds of Colby's 1,850 students receive financial aid packages from the college, with the average package $30,585.

For many of those students, that package included loans ranging from $3,450 to $3,750 per year, or as much as $15,000 in loans over four years. The new policy will eliminate that debt for students.

That doesn't mean every Colby student who receives financial aid from the college will graduate without loan debt.

Collins said about one-third of students who receive financial aid from the college also are expected to pay a portion of the comprehensive fee. For many of those students, that means borrowing money.

But Collins said Colby believes its latest financial aid change could lead to an increase in students applying to the college.

That appears to be the effect of last fall's announcement of increased aid for Maine students.

"(Dean of Admissions) Parker Beverage reported applications from Maine's class of 2012 were up 49 percent from last year," he said.

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com