<p>Harvard Eliminates Tuition for Lower-Income Families (Update1)</p>
<p>March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University, the oldest college in the U.S., said students from families with a combined income of $60,000 or less can attend the school for free.</p>
<p>The new program, the most generous in the eight-school Ivy League, will begin in September, the school said in a statement. Its plan also reduces the amount families with combined incomes of $60,000 to $80,000 will have to pay, the statement said.</p>
<p>``These increases in financial aid build on and extend out emphasis on recruiting students from low-income backgrounds and send a clear signal to middle-class families who have all too often felt that Harvard and other leading institutions are out of reach,'' Harvard President Lawrence Summers, 51, said in a statement.
Students and parents are faced with climbing expenses as the cost for the average four-year private school rose 5.9 percent to $21,235 in 2005-2006, according to the College Board, a New York- based research organization that produces the SAT. About 60 percent of U.S. college students receive some form of grant aid, the College Board said.
Harvard's program builds on one Summers started two years ago that waived tuition for families earning less than $40,000, making the school the first in the Ivy League to offer such a plan. Since then, Yale and Princeton universities and the University of Pennsylvania have all announced similar programs, as well as Stanford University near Palo Alto, California.
Stanford, Yale, Princeton
Harvard, which has a $25.9 billion endowment -- the largest in the U.S. -- set its tuition, room, board and mandatory fees at $43,655 last week. The school will be sending out acceptance notices for next September's entering class later today. According to its Web site, it has 6,613 undergraduates.
Stanford and Yale, which is in New Haven, Connecticut, waive tuition for families making less than $45,000. The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, said last week it will eliminate costs for students from families earning less than $50,000.
Princeton, in New Jersey, which will increase its scholarship budget to about $72 million next year from $65.4 million this year, admitted 196 low-income students in the 2005- 2006 school year, more than double the 88 who enrolled in the fall of 2001 when it started its no-loan policy.
Princeton defines low-income students as those whose families earn less than $50,000, according to Don Betterton, Princeton's head of financial aid. The school enrolls about 4,700 undergraduates, said spokeswoman Cass Cliatt.
``$60,000 is very high,'' said Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst for the College Board and a professor of economics at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs New York.
She said, though, the number of students eligible probably won't be that high.
``It doesn't cost the institutions very much,'' Baum said in a telephone interview.</p>
<p>To contact the reporters on this story:
Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at <a href="mailto:bsullivan10@bloomberg.net">bsullivan10@bloomberg.net</a>;
Patrick Cole in New York at <a href="mailto:pcole3@Bloomberg.net">pcole3@Bloomberg.net</a>.</p>
<p>Last Updated: March 30, 2006 16:40 EST</p>