<p>Hmmm this is looking bright for a couple of PhD hopefuls who want to be professors... expansions = jobs! :) This is definitely one way to remedy that awful job market...</p>
<p>December 29, 2007
Harvard’s Aid to Middle Class Pressures Rivals
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
Just days after Harvard University announced this month that it would significantly expand financial aid to students from families earning as much as $180,000 a year, 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.</p>
<p>“He even said, ‘I know this costs a lot of money, but you should do it anyway,’ ” Dr. Durden said. The president replied that Dickinson, a small liberal arts college where the full annual cost of tuition, fees, room and board nears $45,000, did not have the money to match Harvard’s largess.</p>
<p>Because of Harvard, Dr. Durden said ruefully in recalling the exchange, “a lot of us are going to be under huge pressure to do these things that we just can’t do.”</p>
<p>By substantially discounting costs for all but the very wealthiest students, Harvard shook up the landscape of college pricing. Like Dr. Durden, officials of other colleges say its move will create intense pressure on them to give more aid to upper-middle-class students and will open the door to more parental price haggling.</p>
<p>Some colleges had already been moving to eliminate loans from all their financial aid packages and replace them with grants. 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. </p>
<p>But Harvard, in adopting that practice, has also gone far beyond it: for families earning $120,000 to $180,000 a year, costs will now be limited to about 10 percent of income, meaning that students from such families will pay a maximum of $18,000, a deep discount from the university’s full annual cost of more than $45,600.</p>
<p>Officials at colleges without anything like Harvard’s $35 billion endowment say a rush to give tuition discounting to the middle and upper middle class at institutions like theirs could end up shifting financial aid from low-income students to wealthier, make pricing seem even more arbitrary and create pressure to raise full tuition to pay for all the assistance.</p>
<p>“Harvard has started to redefine the financial aid landscape, and it’s redefined it in a way that is quite beneficial to the wealthiest institutions,” said Jenny Rickard, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bryn Mawr. “It is just a handful of schools that can really respond this way, but it leaves others kind of pulling their hair.”</p>
<p>In the competitive scramble for prestige and rankings, numerous colleges already try to lure some top students away from the Ivy League by showering them with “merit aid” even if they are well off and can afford full tuition. The practice is controversial, with some college administrators scorning it as a way of “buying” a better incoming class, sometimes at the expense of lower-income students. </p>
<p>Some administrators say there will now be pressure to provide more merit aid to relatively wealthy high achievers, reducing the amount available to poorer students.</p>
<p>“It could lead to schools’ doing this sort of thing because they want to be part of the top group,” David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, said of Harvard’s move. If that meant those colleges had to reduce the number of their low-income students, Dr. Oxtoby said, “that would be terrible, exactly the wrong outcome.” (Pomona itself, where full costs are more than $45,000, does not provide merit aid.)</p>
<p>Some academics who study higher education predict that Harvard’s decision may even reduce economic diversity at Harvard itself, even though the university already allows any admitted student from a family earning $60,000 or less to attend virtually free of charge. </p>
<p>Donald E. Heller, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University, said that if Harvard’s new aid program encouraged more middle- and upper-middle-income students to apply, then the number of slots for low-income applicants in an entering class would probably decline. </p>
<p>“They’re just going to get crowded out,” Dr. Heller said.</p>
<p>William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, said that the university was committed to helping poorer students attend but that years of research had shown that students from families in the middle and upper-middle class were not even applying, most likely because they had decided that the price was simply unaffordable.</p>
<p>“People were voting with their feet,” Dean Fitzsimmons said. “It was pretty clear that we were missing out on some pretty exciting students.”</p>
<p>Parents and other critics have complained for years that tuition has steadily increased faster than the rate of inflation, and college affordability has become an issue in Congress. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has suggested that colleges be required to spend more of their endowments as a condition of keeping their tax-exempt status. And a bill approved by the House Education and Labor Committee last month would seek to shame, by listing publicly, those colleges that raise tuition significantly faster than their peers.</p>
<p>But administrators at colleges without enormous endowments to help them cut student costs say they fear that Harvard may have created a wave of haggling by families and made college pricing and student aid packages seem even more opaque.</p>
<p>“It will educate those parents into thinking, ‘Eighteen thousand dollars a year is what we ought to be paying; why should we have to pay more than that?’ ” said John Strassburger, president of Ursinus College, where full costs are currently $43,160.</p>
<p>Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Rochester, where costs are nearly $45,000, said: “Harvard has made it harder for everybody. They’ve given fuel to the argument that colleges are charging more than they should.”</p>
<p>Ms. Rickard, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bryn Mawr, where total costs run over $45,000, said the college had so far resisted substituting grants for loans because it would make it harder to spread aid as widely. “The reason we have the loans is it enables us to support more students,” she said.</p>
<p>For some public universities, Harvard’s move provided a rationale to argue for more state assistance to hold the line on student costs. Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, where total costs are roughly $25,000, said, “My intention, frankly, is to use the Harvard announcement to try to exert pressure on the government of California to increase resources for financial aid.” </p>
<p>And in New York, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a Republican who heads the Senate Higher Education Committee, said he would introduce legislation to provide enough state aid to limit to 10 percent the amount of income that a middle-class family — which he defined as one earning up to $150,000 — would have to pay for college. </p>
<p>“It’s Harvard,” Mr. LaValle said. “They created a new paradigm. People will pay attention to it. And we need to pay attention to the affordability issue as it applies to middle-income taxpayers.”</p>
<p>Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company</p>
<p>In my opinion, this is a step in the wrong direction. To better understand the problem, ask yourself this: Why are you on this forum? For most, it's because we want an "elite education." But, what does this mean? </p>
<p>To me, it means being taught in an enviornment with brilliant faculty, small class sizes, and numerous research opportunities. Increase enrollment, and what do you get? Constant numbers of faculty providing a larger number of students with instruction(thus increasing the student:teacher ratio). Increase the number of sections offered(and the faculty to teach them), and what do you get? A large public university, which may have some great teachers, but by and large is not known for its great faculty.</p>
<p>One of the things that's appealing to me about a so-called "elite education" is that students have a relatively intimate setting. For example, at an Ivy league institution, you generally won't find more than 50 people majoring in the same subject each class(with some +/- based on the major, university, etc.). This gives you a great opportunity: you get to know most of the professors in your department, you get to do great research, you know most (if not all) of the people in your major, and (perhaps most importantly), you get the opportunity to make connections.</p>
<p>To elaborate further on the latter point, imagine this scenario: you're a sophmore in college who has been actively doing research with professors in the department you're majoring in, and have gotten to know the faculty well. Now, for example, if someone contacts a professor that you know, and is asking for someone to hire over the summer, the professor will have a good chance of recommending you for the job.</p>
<p>Now, in a public university setting, you would not have the same opportunity. Chances are, your professor is teaching extremely large classes, and does not know his/her students particularly well. You may be able to get the same opportunity at a public university, but it requires significantly more effort to get to know professors well in an extremely large enviornment.</p>
<p>But, I suppose all of this leads to the question: What is an elite education?, which, with no doubt, will yield different answers from each person asked the question.</p>
<p>The only probably I could potentially see with this is that after the next few years, high school graduating classes are going to decrease in size. Obviously in the long term they'll go back up and even surpass the current class sizes, but if places like Yale start building now all this new space will open up just as they start recieving fewer applications. (That of course doesn't take into account the possibility of future classes having a higher percentage of qualified students, and therefore just as many applicants to elite schools.)</p>
<p>seafoodlover: very interesting article. I think that just goes to show that Harvard really is screwing over other universities. If it's able to attract more middle- and upper-middle- income students, then they're more likely to get in than poor students, who've had fewer opportunities. Funnily enough, by helping more students pay for college, Harvard is becoming the rich elitist university it was (or always has been).</p>
<p>Perhaps this is going to be better for top publics, who, as the article says, can pressure their legislatures into providing more financial aid.</p>
<p>The problem here is that if the top-tiers elect to not expand, people will be forced to look into lower tier schools, which most people don't want. Maybe 20-30 years into the future, students will look for the best schools outside of the US because they can't have the best quality education. Eventually, talents will shift to other countries.</p>
<p>IMHO, the best way is to build more universities and hire more profs with higher salaries in order to motive them to teach well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
people will be forced to look into lower tier schools, which most people don't want.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>But they'll take 'em. They're certainly cheaper and more accessible than international schools. In addition, this movement would cause the "lower-tier schools" to become "top-tier schools."</p>
<p>Though I'm not quite sure what you mean by "lower tier."</p>
<p>kyledavid80: Harvard (and Y & P & S) expanding into attracting more middle income students is not being done in a vacuum in regards to low income or rural students. The "big dogs" are correspondingly AGGRESSIVELY courting the low-income and rural and other socioeconomic sub-groups with new recruiting efforts and outreach programs. I highly doubt that the current move to grab the great mid-income kids will be at the expense of the low income or needy int'l kids.</p>
<p>What will happen is that the yield for these admits will rise (won't be swayed by the big money from UMich, UVA or top honors programs at Publics), and that more "diamonds in the rough" will consider and be admitted to these schools. The more traditional rich wealthy subgroup will see less admits (unless of course, the schools expand: the original purpose of this thread).</p>
<p>This gives some perspective on why my school (Pomona) is so intent on expanding class sizes and aid. </p>
<p>What can I say, money talks. And it walks too.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Parents and other critics have complained for years that tuition has steadily increased faster than the rate of inflation, and college affordability has become an issue in Congress. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has suggested that colleges be required to spend more of their endowments as a condition of keeping their tax-exempt status. And a bill approved by the House Education and Labor Committee last month would seek to shame, by listing publicly, those colleges that raise tuition significantly faster than their peers.
[/quote]
I'm wondering how about 'tax-exempt' for those parent who has to pay the education cost for their children? If Harvard (or any colleges) got tax-exempt for the money they funded to the 'need' students. Why can't parents got tax-exempt for their money funded to their kids' college education?</p>
<p>Under H's new FA, a full fare pay even for a family above $180k is too much, if the family live in a earea where living expanses are much higher than nation's average, say, triangle state earea around NY.</p>
<p>Princeton expanded class size by about 400 starting with the class of 2011 after they constructed a new residential college, Whitman. I visited and it's absolutely stunning...the only building to be constructed in the High Gothic style in ages...</p>
<p>I wonder how this situation would look if we examine it like an economics problem. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the supply of exceptional professors and other faculty is finite/fixed. The number of TOP applicants is going to stay relatively the same because the HS population is peaking right now, so we'll assume that is fixed, too. Within these parameters, if the elite schools expand they will collectively need to consume more of the finite supply of both professors and top applicants. This means that instead of taking the top, let's say, 10% of faculty and applicants, they will have to take the top 20% or so, meaning that the overall quality is likely to be less. That consumption by the elite colleges will mean that second tier colleges will have to compete for the top 20-30% of applicants and faculty instead of the top 10-20%, so their quality will drop as well. Essentially, everyone right on down the chain will suffer from less brilliant staff and students, weakening the second tier colleges, dilluting the brilliance of the Ivies, and giving a monopoly of most of America's top students to elite colleges.</p>
<p>Long story short, there is a finite supply of what HYPS has, and we can't solve that problem by simply increasing class size. We need to increase the supply of quality educators and students, which is already happening as more students are able to attend college and as the second tier gets the trickle down from the top ten or so.</p>
<p>Considering the caliber of Yale rejects, those extra 600 undergrads who can go to Yale's proposed residential colleges aren't exactly going to dumb the place down. Yale adcoms already try to pre-soften the rejection blows during info sections by claiming that no one would notice a difference if they replaced the current student body with the waitlist.</p>
<p>If the Ivy League endowments can afford to expand the number of seats in the student body and provide adequate resources in terms of teaching, advising, support staff as well as housing- then good for them!</p>
<p>As far as touchy-feely concerns about large student bodies go, let us not forgot that Ivies already have populations comparable to other moderate sized universities and already feature lecture classes with hundreds of attendees.</p>
<p>But why make it worse? I would not have considered my school of choice had it been much bigger than it is now.</p>
<p>A little off-topic: that Dr. Durden, president of Dickinson College quoted in the NY Times article posted by Seafoodlover, was my German TA at JHU for a year!</p>
<p>... and in 10-15 years when the size of the applicant pool has gone from peak to trough, the ivy expansion will be blamed for driving smaller schools out of business. ....</p>
<p>tetris - without getting into any of your follow-on arguments, your basic premise - that the applicant pool is ever expanding - is flawed. </p>
<p>Memory is this area does seem to be rather short. My school district recently finished the second of two massive infrastructure expansions to deal with the 33% increase in students since the early 90's. Much of that expansion was based upon hysterics from those projecting 5 year trends out til eternity. Forgotten of course (even by the superintendent :)), was that the 90's number was 25% lower than it had been in the mid 70's - right at the number that the district again peaked at two years ago.</p>
<p>A few thoughts...</p>
<ul>
<li><p>30 years ago there was a huge difference (in the quality of education) between a few top schools in the US and 'everyone else.' Today, that division is far less obvious. This is especially true for 'big money' (e.g. costs a lot for equipment) subjects like science and engineering where larger, often public or semi-public, schools offer better facilities and more relevent teaching environments for these subjects. I'm not saying that the traditional top schools aren't good, just saying that they're not longer automatically the 'top school' in many cases. It's not that the traditional old schools have gotten worse, just that many others have caught up (or passed them) in many areas. </p></li>
<li><p>At the moment some of the old traditional top schools sill carry their strong name because those that went there 20-30 years ago are now in a lot of top high profile positions. However, with the expansion in quality and quantity by many others schools, in 20-30 years time we'll see a much broader range of schools represented by top officials... </p></li>
<li><p>We're already seeing that just getting an undergrad degree from one of these traditional 'top schools' is often, on its own, no longer enough to keep competitive with the 'field.' Whereas a degree from one of these places previously more or less ment that you're set for life, now you get thrown into the field with top students from many many other schools too. The NYTimes a few months ago had an article talking about something along these lines saying that, in today's world, the real thing that now sets students apart is those that have signifigant international experience via volunteering or studying abroad. These day's it's almost like... have a BA from X old US university (eh, so what)... wait, what, you lived in Europe for a while and got a Masters/PhD from Oxford/Cambridge hey OK now that does actually set you apart... let's talk. The article was making the point that in todays higher education field (where probably about 100 US universities can all offer a top education) those who have international experience really set themselves apart from the field.</p></li>
<li><p>My point from the above comments is that these old traditional top schools are no longer naturally holding those positions. For, likely the first time, they now have to compete with many other schools that were previously considered 'second tier.' These 'old top schools' know this and as a result are under a lot of pressure to expand to remain relevent (as most of the schools they are now competing against are much larger). However, they have a dilemma as the traditional old schools typically charge 2, 3, 5 times as much as some other schools. Harvard has really set the bar high by using their endowment to bring these prices back into a realistic range that can remain competitive with the 'newly minted' top schools. Yes, they write press releases about how they're helping those with less money, but you can bet that in the board rooms where the decisions were made they were discussing stats showing how they were losing top students to other schools becuase people didn't want to shell out the $$$. However, those old schools with smaller endowments might start to struggle. It used to be that people paid huge amounts to go to these old schools becuase the education was actually much better... now that this really isn't the case anymore administrators there know that people won't pay 2-4 times as much for a 'name' when that name dosen't get one recognized to the extent it used to. If they want to keep attracting top students (and not just rich ones) they need to change their model... will be interesting to see what happens in the coming decades...</p></li>
</ul>
<p>"the traditional old schools typically charge 2, 3, 5 times as much as some other schools"
Huh? Where on earth are you getting this info? Do some research before you make statements such as this. There are not huge discrepencies [ 2, 3 5 times] in tuition costs between top private colleges and 2nd tier private schools. The large price differences are only with the cost of to going to a public college in state and a private college.</p>
<p>menloparkmom, i think he means all private schools, which happen to be true, imo, iyo. The statement caught me at first, then I re-read again, guess 'the traditional old schools' means all old 'private' school. He did mention public and semi-public schools as competite schools in it early part.</p>
<p>Good thoughts. It make me think twice now (but too late any way.lol)</p>
<p>Just to clarify, yes I was comparing the expensive private schools (the ones many consider to be the 'elite' schools) with what are now also top schools (often public schools). With this comparison it's not uncommon for one to cost several times more than the other. </p>
<p>My argument was that (although it didn't used to be the case) today there are many situations where you could pay a quarter the amount but still get an education that was just as good... this is the situation facing some of these 'old school elite' schools.</p>