Smugness at the Top

Once again, just as it has prevented rain from falling on Commencement Day for the last 361 years, Harvard has defied gravity. When Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania announced their decisions to offer more generous financial aid packages earlier this year, any Harvard-trained economist might have expected that a price war would drive down the costs of a Harvard education too.

But such economists would be forgetting Harvard's little pact with God. Instead of pledging to increase financial aid this year, Harvard pledged close to nothing (our offers would remain within "shouting distance" of those of other schools, promised President Neil L. Rudenstine). And now the results are in. Not only did the College's higher prices fail to deter students from enrolling; the percentage of admitted students choosing to matriculate actually increased. Selling Harvard, it seems, is something like selling insulin. People are going to buy it no matter how much it costs.

The College's failure to commit to leading rather than following on the crucial matter of financial aid embodies every negative stereotype that those outside of Harvard associate with our fair University. It is arrogant, selfish and snide. The University coddles its funds, running capital campaigns to build extra squash courts while throwing its students (even the squash players) into ungodly debt.

And when the results of the high yield for the Class of 2002 came in, administrators became even more smug. These pre-frosh seem to have proven what the administration already knew to be fact: Harvard can do anything short of vomiting on its students, and they will still pay. The worst part of this atrocity, of course, is that for the perpetrators, there are no consequences.

Rudenstine may be leading the fight to preserve affirmative action in higher education, but when it comes to affordability our president is awfully silent. With the largest endowment of any university in the nation, Harvard must change its ways and offer a top-notch program of financial aid.

Moreover, the admissions office must continue its efforts to broaden the applicant pool in socio-economic terms. Though Harvard like to brag that 70 percent of the student body is on financial aid, this figure is deceptive in that it includes students with loans and outside sources of aid. A full 47 percent of the student body is thus actually defined as "no need" by the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid.

Since God is clearly on Harvard's side, there is only one group of people who can pass judgment upon the College's lack of leadership on financial aid: its alumni. We therefore urge all soon-to-be-alumni to fight back. Harvard should not be exempt from natural law. Now and in the future, give money to the College only if it is earmarked for financial aid.