Harvard — whose $34.9-billion endowment is the largest of any university — already offered one of the most generous aid programs for low-income students of any private college, asking nothing from parents earning under $60,000.
But its announcement Monday, the latest of several recently by elite colleges concerning financial aid, reflects a shift toward making top schools more affordable to middle- and even upper-middle-class families. Harvard admits its full list price of $45,620, while comparable to other elite private universities, is a burden to all but the most wealthy.
The school will now pump more than $20 million in new aid to a group that extends beyond the 90th percentile nationally in income. Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust called the commitment "a response to the enormous stress that a particular group of families feel about the cost of higher education."
Good for them.
I wonder if the entire story is the cost. Perhaps people are voting with their wallets and choosing more conservative campuses for their tuition dollars. No amount of money would make me endorse Harvard, Yale or countless other ivory towers for my kids. While it may look good on paper, the last thing we need is more graduates that feel they are entitled to my money.
ReplyDeleteI'm having a hard time getting my mind around having an endowment of $35 BILLION. When you've got an endowment that exceeds the GNP of most of the countries on the planet, I guess you can afford to give some of it out to students.
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