Stealing Harvard
December 14th, 2007 by NSwiftIf Harvard has a $35 billion endowment, why should anyone pay $45,600/year to attend? There’s lots of reasons, I’m sure, including supply and demand, prestige and the like. But it’s comforting to know that it’s mostly the government’s fault.
Check out this great article at the WSJ.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
The WSJ is dead-on when it discusses the 3rd-party-payer problem and rising college tuitions, but it misses the mark on the specific reason Harvard is increasing its aid. It’s not Congress, it is competition for the most elite students — Princeton has basically given free tuition to middle class students for a couple of years now, I think Yale is doing something similar, and applications to Harvard are dropping. Plus, the cost of the Harvard tuition expansion is laughable, just $22 million a year, which is a rounding error on their endowment.