The cynic might think that Harvard's new aid policy is market consolidation. Harvard has the biggest endowment and can afford to spend more to bankrupt the others. In so doing it provides a major incentive to parents of children accepted to Harvard and also accepted to Penn, Princeton, Yale or Stanford to pick Harvard. What a way to capture more of the top (academic) end of the market without increasing educational quality a bit. JD Rockefeller could not have done better at Standard Oil.

NB - I am not entirely a disinterested party.

But people don't value what they don't have to earn...

1) Even if tuition were free, students would still have to earn their way in. And they'd have to do it with even steeper competition than they face under the existing system.

2) Harvard grads seem to think quite highly of themselves and their diplomas; there's plenty of room to experiment before any undue risk of low self esteem comes up.

What Harvard was charging even BEFORE the increased financial aid seemed pretty reasonable to me. In many cases, less than what even in-state students pay to attend the poorly funded state university where I work. This was BEFORE. I don't think it's extortion at all. I doubt that even the full Harvard tuition pays for the actual expenditure per student at Harvard. In that sense, everyone is getting a subsidy at Harvard, even those from families making $1 million a year and up.

If people really feel like victims of extortion at such upscale places as Harvard, here's some advice: stop acting like crybabies and find a place that you think offers a better deal. It's a little much seeing the conservative and well-to-do establishment types whining about what an oppressive situation they are put by the Ivies and their ilk.

If donors are concerned about affordability of tuition, here's a suggestion: give your money for scholarships and make sure it's earmarked for that. Instead of to the athletic department or for a new drama center or for the biochemistry research fund. It will be easy to take care of this "problem" that way.

Mike--given the tax-free status of university endowments, which is a matter of public policy subject to change by Congress, do you really think it is inapropriate for people, in their capacity as citizens, to have opinions about the way these institutions manage their finances?

Well, of course people are entitled to their opinions. But if they want to feel victimized by having to pay a modest amount to go to Harvard, less than if they went to a state university, I have the right to my opinion about them. Which is that they're acting like spoiled brats. For example, people from families making $180K who complain about paying far less than the kid down the street working 20 hrs a week to pay to go to the local public community college or state university. These conservative Ivy League types seem to have gotten an entitlement mentality lately. It's really helping to turn me off to the whole conservative critique of higher education. And if they're losing people like me, they're probably headed in the wrong direction.

Now that's my opinion.

While I don't have much sympathy for the Harvard students, I do have quite a lot for the students at the non-rich private schools and the state universities for whom tuition is rising faster than the ability to pay (in many cases).

The answer is not, in my opinion, to slam these non-rich schools, which often operate at a tenth the cost per student of the super-rich places, but rather to recognize that there are good reasons expenditures are rising at the rate they are, and then tryint to do something constructive about it. For example: raise annual giving and endowment giving from rich alumni and other friends, and dedicate more of this to standard operating costs (a surrogate for tuition). Rather than spending it on more over-the-top athletics, buildings, monuments. Indiana University is a good example of a school that is doing this. Very much unlike the place where I toil.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e00a93cc-aa6d-11dc-a779-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

A good piece by the Weekly Standard's Christopher Caldwell. He makes the observation that the Harvard move will consolidate the advantage of the big rich places and wipe out whatever there is of quality at the state universities.

I hope the people who brought this will be happy, left and right both.

A colleague of mine who was once an Harvard faculty member independently came to my interpretation and added another motive. Athletic scholarships are not allowed in the Ivy League, but need-based financial aid is. This change substantially benefits Harvard in recruitment of talented athletes of middle to upper middle economic status. This may seem trivial, but athletic success sells with Ivy alums just as it does with others.