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Emily Gould

12/11/07 09:47AM

Filed to: Harvard

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Good news for middle-class and upper-middle-class children lucky enough to have been admitted to Harvard! That elite university is dramatically augmenting the amount of financial aid it gives such students—for example, a family making $120,000 would have to pay about $12,000 in tuition. But not everyone can afford to follow suit. "Only a handful of universities have anything even remotely close to Harvard's financial resources, and it was not clear how many could afford to follow. Yale tersely said in response only that it was planning an announcement next month on expanded financial aid." Burn! [NYT]

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PandoraSpocks Emily Gould 12/11/07 10:22AM

Many, MANY private universities could do this, but they won't. They like to pretend they are egalitarian and poor when they are, in fact, neither. Endowments have incresed exponentially — including many eastern colleges who pretend otherwise, such as Yale. [en.wikipedia.org]

And while tuition has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, universities have cut down on tenured staff, replacing expensive faculty with the equivalent of permalancers. Oh, did I mention the endowments are TAX FREE??? That while you and I get FICA'd and IRS'd for most of our adult ives, colleges and universities just sit on their endowments watching the interest compound.

ae38 Emily Gould 12/11/07 04:08PM

While the overall endowment is $35 billion, the money is actually allocated on the basis of where the money came from. For instance, the business school actually makes up a substantial part of the endowment, and the other schools have no access to those funds. That's why the business school is beautiful and is always undergoing renovations. The med school then has the second largest endowment followed by the law school (that may be reversed, but I'm pretty sure that is the pecking order). The college actually has one of the lowest endowments, just ahead of the school of public health, education, and divinity. Undergraduates from Harvard are not as happy as graduate students so there is a smaller pool of money for the college to draw from. Also, only a portion of the college's endowment can be used for financial aid as most of the larger gifts are earmarked for specific uses. So, actually, no, the school cannot afford to have everyone go for free, though the actual cost of tuition is a fraction of the true costs to provide a Harvard education, so its not like they pass on the full cost to students in the first place. Also, I am one of those people who works with the university fund to cajole other alum's to give.

SheWalkedWithAZombie Emily Gould 12/11/07 01:46PM

I just have a hard time feeling sorry for the upper class families

who have to pay tuition for Harvard. It is still nothing compared to

the sacrifices that most people make in order to send themselves and/or

their kids to college.

And I'm more worried about corporations' tax breaks than the ones

that are given to educational institutions, even the disgustingly rich

ones that raise more money each year than many countries' entire GDP.

Unlike the ivy league — which doesn't spend its money like the good

puritans they are — Stanford spends. Sometimes on things that are

important. Of course not on properly staffing the library or having a

decent university press: that would be wasteful. But they have had to

raise billions to rebuild after the earthquake.

craftysam Emily Gould 12/12/07 12:10PM

Last year Robin Roberts got a college student from her Secret Santa, Diane Sawyer ([www.highbeam.com]) - adopting a college student is like, so all the rage. Do you hear that Brangelina?