Responding to mounting pressure to contain college costs, two universities announced plans yesterday to freeze tuition or significantly reduce the debt of students forced to take out loans.

At the University of Virginia, no low-income student will have to take out loans, starting this fall. The university, in Charlottesville, said it would instead give grants to students from families living at or below 150 percent of the poverty line, about $27,600 a year for a family of four.

Other students may still have to take out loans, but the university said it would cap them at 25 percent of the total in-state price of attending the institution, which is now about $14,520 a year, including room and board. Beyond that, students will also be covered by grants, it said.

John T. Casteen, the university's president, challenged his staff to come up with a way to make college more affordable after the University of North Carolina announced its loan-cutting initiative last October. Though the Virginia plan will cost an additional $7 million by the time it is fully in place in 2008-9, Mr. Casteen described the plan as essential "because access for students with need is a priority for us."

At the same time, George Washington University, a private institution in Washington, D.C., announced that it would freeze tuition at a constant level for all freshmen entering this fall.

The fixed tuition, $34,000, is actually higher than the current price tag of $30,820, but over the course of four years, the new tuition is the equivalent of 3.8 percent annual increases, the university said. The university had been raising tuition an average of 5.3 percent over the past five years.

So, the new plan will probably offer some savings, and Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, the university's president, said it "takes the mystery out of tuition prices.`' To help students manage the initial jolt of paying higher tuition, the university said it would increase its financial aid budget by $14 million to a total of $123 million next year. It will also guarantee that grants, once given, will not be taken away.

At a time when tuitions are increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation, and by an average of 14 percent at public universities, fixing tuition has becoming increasingly common. Last year, Illinois enacted a law freezing tuition for public university students at the level they pay as freshman.

Other individual colleges, like Western Illinois University and Pace University in New York, have adopted similar plans. And more than 200 universities around the country have signed onto a savings plan that allows parents to pay college tuition up front, even if their child has just been born, to lock in current prices.