Monday, December 10, 2007

Harvard Improves Financial Aid

Harvard's is again improving its financial aid policy, as described here and here.

It's not as wacky or ludicrous an idea as not charging anyone tuition, but I'm still glad to hear it. (Wait, this doesn't cut my salary, does it...)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And some context: Senate Looking at Endowments as Tuition Rises (NY Times). "The committee, which has a central role in setting tax policy, has been pressuring universities to use more of their wealth for financial aid and threatening to require them to spend a minimum of 5 percent of their endowments each year, as foundations must. The committee pointed out that donations to universities and their endowment earnings were both tax-exempt. Seeking to head off Congressional action, wealthy universities have been rushing in recent months to expand financial aid, in some cases using more of their endowments to increase assistance to low-income and upper-income students alike."

Anonymous said...

Nobody has mentioned the New York Times
op-ed
from earlier in the week pointing out how this could be a bad thing for the country overall.

Anonymous said...

That op-ed is illogical. If you follow its argument, then Harvard should really be raising tuition rates faster to avoid competing with other schools.

On the other hand, it would be bad for the country, I think, if Harvard's ridiculous endowment led to Congress setting a 5% rule for all schools.