Harvard Un-Levels the Playing Field
Posted on December 29th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
Harvard’s decision to extend financial aid to students from families earning up to $180,000 a year appears to have some unintended consequences (or were they intended?), according to an article in the New York Times. Jonathan Glater reports that the increased financial aid is putting pressure on smaller colleges to match Harvard, and, by creating greater competition for middle-class kids, may actually take aid money away from low-income students.
Officials at colleges without anything like Harvardâs $35 billion endowment say a rush to give tuition discounting to the middle and upper middle class at institutions like theirs could end up shifting financial aid from low-income students to wealthier, make pricing seem even more arbitrary and create pressure to raise full tuition to pay for all the assistance.
…Some administrators say there will now be pressure to provide more merit aid to relatively wealthy high achievers, reducing the amount available to poorer students.
âIt could lead to schoolsâ doing this sort of thing because they want to be part of the top group,â David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, said of Harvardâs move. If that meant those colleges had to reduce the number of their low-income students, Dr. Oxtoby said, âthat would be terrible, exactly the wrong outcome.â
[Glater should have noted that Oxtoby was a candidate for the Harvard presidency.]
In the piece, Harvard dean of admissions Bill Fitzsimmons admits that a significant motive for the university’s decision was to compete for middle-class kids whom Harvard wanted but who weren’t applying because they felt they couldn’t afford to go.
“People were voting with their feet,â Dean Fitzsimmons said.
This is all very interesting. Presumably one of Harvard’s motives was also to deflect attention away from the rising-much-faster-than-inflation tuition it charges, but the move seems to have backfired.
Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Rochester, where costs are nearly $45,000, said: âHarvard has made it harder for everybody. Theyâve given fuel to the argument that colleges are charging more than they should.â
Of course, parents and students are going to be grateful for Harvard’s move, and they should be, not just because of how it helps them pay for Harvard, but because it suggests that there ought to be more pressure on colleges to lower tuition, or at least help families pay it, and creates something more of a free market in college tuition.
What is irrefutable, though, is that the race here goes to the wealthiest; Harvard is playing this game with vastly greater resources than any other university.
How long will it be before there are serious calls for income redistribution? Perhaps a luxury tax like baseball’s?
9 Responses
12/29/2007 12:42 pm
There was that op-ed in the Times recently by Herb Allen calling for just that (redistribution). But probably you were snorkeling someplace with bad Internet access, and missed the paper that day.
12/29/2007 2:40 pm
the only important endowment stat is per student endowment, and on that score harvard is far from the wealthiest college. richard, incantation will not make it otherwise. is it possible that harvard made its move because it was the right thing to do for middle and upper-middle class families?
12/29/2007 3:08 pm
“Presumably one of Harvard’s motives was also to deflect attention away from the rising-much-faster-than-inflation tuition it charges, but the move seems to have backfired.”
Rich, that is exactly the kind of crappy, unsourced innuendo for which you would nail other journalists. Who presumed??? You, of course, but no one in this story. I am sure others have said it, but that doesn’t we should presume it to be true, as you go on to declare. Would it be too much to hope for a little evidence when you say that this move was intended as a distraction, which fooled no one?
The NYT piece is excellent, because it shows how everyone will see in this announcement exactly what they want to see. I love that the UC guy is going to use it as a club with his legislature-he is exactly right, UC is charging too much for even an excellent state university eduction. I know it’s hard to imagine, but Fitzsimmons might actually be telling the truth.
12/29/2007 6:22 pm
I don’t doubt the sincerity of Bill Fitzsimmon’s or Drew Faust’s desire to help middle-class families pay for Harvard. Yet neither do I believe that they were unaware of the competitive pressures of the higher education marketplace and the potential consequences of the new financial aid policies for this marketplace.
12/30/2007 9:06 am
“Fitzsimmons’,” excuse me.
12/30/2007 10:23 am
It strikes me as an excellent idea that Harvard would use its financial resources to compete for the best students and faculty. Harvard could one day offer free tuition to ALL students accepted and that would likely result in an expansion of the pool of talent it could draw from. It would make sense to do this also at the graduate school level.
This would still leave room for admissions staff and faculty to do the balancing act of thinking about the composition of the class and the like. It would of course increase their workload as a result of increasing the number of applications.
If Harvard then offers these talented students a true world class education, and thus ensures their chances of high income for a significant proportion of the graduates, their gifts to the university would more than compensate Harvard for the initial investment in their education.
President Faust deserves congratulations for this creative and out of the box thinking. This is the kind of bold and innovative leadership that universities and Harvard need.
12/30/2007 1:59 pm
Rich, “not unaware” is a far cry from the intentional deception you implied. I still can’t figure out whether you really think Harvard intended to fool Congress but failed, or whether you are acknowledging that your presumption has no evidence to support it.
12/30/2007 6:44 pm
Wow. You must not be one of the people suddenly eligible to get Harvard for $18K per year or less!
12/30/2007 6:51 pm
If every steak house in town was selling steak for $10 and the most successful one suddenly cut its price to $5, would it be a bad thing to do because it put too much price pressure on the other steak houses, which couldn’t afford to match the price?