Harvard to raise financial aid for the middle class

Harvard has unveiled a plan to provide financial aid to all but the super-rich. And now Yale says it's going to do the same thing.

New York Times, Dec.10, 2007

Harvard Steps Up Financial Aid

BOSTON, Dec. 10 — Harvard University announced today that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offers to nearly all middle-class and upper-middle-class students, expanding on efforts it made three years ago to make its campus affordable for low-income students.
The initiative appears to make Harvard’s aid to students with household incomes of $120,000 to $180,000 the most generous to be offered by any of the country’s elite private universities. Harvard will generally charge such students 10 percent of their family household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $45,000.

University officials said the move would cut costs by anywhere from a third to 50 percent for many students. The initiative would increase financial aid spending by the university to $120 million from $98 million. Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, said she hoped the plan would help restore the fundamental idea of American higher education as an engine of upward mobility.

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Bloomberg.com, Dec. 12, 2007

Yale to Join Harvard in Easing Cost of Elite Schools

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Yale University plans to announce a new financial aid package next month that could rival the initiative Harvard University put in place yesterday to ease costs for ``middle-income'' families.

The governing board for Yale, located in New Haven, Connecticut, met last week to discuss the new program, said spokesman Tom Conroy when asked whether Yale would follow Harvard's example. The change is occurring ``irrespective of any other institution's announcement,'' Conroy said in a telephone interview. He said he couldn't supply details on the plan.

Harvard's plan trims the annual cost of attendance at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school by as much as 50 percent for families earning $120,000 to $180,000. Other schools, responding to competition for the best students, will probably follow suit, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the Washington-based American Council on Education.

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Financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz of www.finaid.org calls the move good public policy. It still won't make it easy to get into Harvard or Yale, though.