Monro Maintains College Financing Difficult for Low-Income Families

Harvard is disconnecting itself more and more from students in very low income brackets, according to Dean Monro. Despite the College's "multi-pronged attack" on the problem of financing an education, Monro said, "Harvard is still separated from the low-income students in ways that weren't so before."

Monro pointed out that the average income of the parents of scholarship students has gone up rapidly in the past five years--faster than national norms. "The problem is how to adjust the scholarship program to a new situation in which a family has a five-figure income and still can't pay the bills," he said.

Taking as an example a family with an annual income of $10,000 and with two children in college, Monro said, "College for the two children would cost $6,000 and the income tax would be $2,500. That leaves $1,500 to live on."

Explains Application Drop

Monro listed two reasons for the unexpectedly small number of applications for the Class of '65--sharpened counseling, and "costs and a sense of discouragement."

"The word in many communities is that Harvard is interested only in valedictorians," Monro said. High school guidance counselors "may turn away good people," he observed. He said this is one disadvantage of the necessity of "turning admissions decisions over to people who don't know for sure."

Rising costs are another disheartening factor, according to Monro. Increased tuitions, the cost of taking entrance examinations, and the application fee add up to "one big bundle of discouragement."

Discussing another area of the admissions problem, Monro said, "It's very clear than students don't want to commute if they don't have to. They want to go away to school."