Harvard's New Financial Aid Plan Forces Other Colleges to Consider Similar Move

We previously blogged Harvard's new plan to provide financial grant assistance to middle class students.  On December 29, 2007, the New York Times reports that Harvard's move is likely to pressure other colleges and universities to follow suit.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

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.

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.

To see the entire article, go to "Harvard’s Aid to Middle Class Pressures Rivals" in the New York Times.

DAB