Money-Rx Blog

Jonathan D. Glater, New York Times, reports on Harvard's decision to limit annual costs to 10% of income for families earning $120,000 to $180,000. This limit reduces expense for students from these families to a maximum of $18000, while the full cost of one year at Harvard, including lodging and college tuition is about $45,600. "In the weeks since Harvard’s announcement, a stampede of additional institutions — the University of Pennsylvania, Pomona, Swarthmore, Haverford — have taken the same step, which will help middle- and upper-middle-income families."

And those that haven't, are being pressured to do so. "William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., got a query from a student’s father, asking whether the college would follow Harvard’s lead."

Harvard, with it's $34.9 billion endowment, and a handful of other institutions, like Stanford, Yale, Texas A&M, can afford to waive costs. Most colleges across the United States simply do not have the means to reduce costs. This is the educational equivalent of the rich growing richer. Those who subsidize costs, will get to pick and choose the best students, even more so than before. That leaves only one avenue to level the playing field. More federal aid for education. I don't think I even want to go there right now.