Staying Alive on the Finance Front

Welcome to Harvard. Oil paintings line the walls of dining halls where chandeliers hang from palatial ceilings. Georgian architecture characterizes first-year residences, separated from the city by a formidable cast-iron fence. Final clubs exude elitism. Everything points to one message: “Welcome fellow members of the ruling elite. Come view the amusements of the idle rich.”

The lavish lifestyle associated with Harvard rarely includes financial aid. To a subset of wealthy students, Harvard’s estimated $37,750 cost for the 2002-2003 year has never been on their radar. Meredith E. James ’04, whose father is a New York City investment banker, is reflective of this population. “My family is comfortable. There is no reason we should apply for aid when we can afford school already.”

Harvard’s Meredith Jameses stand in opposition to students like Amy E. Keel ’04, who hesitated to apply to or attend Harvard solely because of cost. The daughter of two public school teachers, Keel grew up in wealthy Milton, Mass. as the odd family out. “I hated when kids at school would read off long lists of what they got for Christmas,” says Keel. “I never had as much stuff. My mother wanted to have more kids, but we didn’t have enough money to support them. Our house was rundown and we had no back yard, but we tried to make it as nice as possible.”

Although her parents encouraged her to apply to Harvard, Keel was consumed by guilt: “My parents already had $75,000 of debt. I should go to a state school where I could get a decent education. My parents wanted me to go to a good school but I knew it would be too hard on them. Especially since I have a younger brother.” Keel also understood that Harvard’s financial burden would partially fall on her. During high school, Keel worked 14-hour weeks as a baby-sitter and at the library in order to earn spending money. Her expectation was that in college she would continue to do the same.

And Byerly Hall has been good to Keel. After she was accepted, Keel’s parents negotiated a generous financial aid package with the admissions office. Sally Donahue, director of financial aid, says that “We’ve increased the scholarship budget by about $8 million. In large part it’s driven by the growth in Harvard’s endowment. It’s wonderful.” Donahue adds that since 1998, need-based scholarships have increased $4,000 on average per student.

James and Keel have survived the game of finance: James is wealthy enough to bypass financial aid altogether; Keel is poor enough to get a free ride. Students caught in the middle class, however, often lose out. As Miranda I. Lash ’03 explains, “Financial aid covers those who are extremely poor. And people who are rich obviously don’t need any money. But there is a point in the middle class where you can almost make it to pay, but you can’t pay as much as they expect. I don’t think they’ve synchronized the aid and the ability to pay.”

Sally Donahue asserts that the College’s formula for aid is standardized and fair. “We assess a student’s need in accordance with both federal guidelines and institutional financial aid policy. There are a number of forms students and their families file in application for assistance, in addition to supplying us with copies of their most recent federal tax forms. The need analysis formula that we use considers a number of factors, such as the size of a student’s family, the number of members in college, family income and assets and any unusual circumstances or expenses.”

Lash wonders how closely Harvard’s policy accounts for these “unusual circumstances.” Her mother, who works at a medical clinic primarily serving Hispanic Medicare patients, must single-handedly support Miranda, her two siblings, her grandmother and her aunt. “My family has struggled to meet the tuition payments since the beginning. My mom has taken out massive loans on her credit cards. She’s considered selling our house and moving to an apartment, just so it will be easier to pay for me and my younger sister and brother when they get to college. It has been a big stress on everyone.” But Donahue states that “the average income of scholarship recipients is $80,000. People have very different definitions of middle-class from their life experiences. It’s a pretty nebulous definition.”

In the case of Lash, the school requires financial information regarding her non-custodial father. “Getting the tax forms from my dad has been a real problem, since my parents are divorced. But I cannot get any award without my dad’s paperwork, regardless of the fact that he doesn’t contribute anything to my tuition. The financial aid office takes no account for the fact that some parents just will not or cannot contribute.”

While the financial aid office does recognize these problems exist, their response comes off as cold. “There may well be a serious problem. To be fair to all our students, we can base our financial aid decisions only on ability and not willingness to pay and a decision to attend Harvard must be made by you and your parents.” This frustrates Lash further. “What are you supposed to do when your aid package is based upon a contribution that you will never see?”

Lash was forced to accept Advanced Standing as a result of her financial situation. “At this current rate, I can’t afford to spend all four years at Harvard. Since freshman year, I planned to take Advanced Standing and only study three years at Harvard purely for financial reasons.” But Lash’s recent concentration switch from Social Studies to the History of Art and Architecture is forcing her to stay another year. To save money, Lash has opted to study abroad. “It’s not really a choice with me. I need credits now that I’m in a new major. Almost any university in Europe is cheaper.”

Lash approached financial aid officials with an optimistic attitude last year. “It’s such an emotionally loaded topic. Once they see how much I want to stay, they will help me,” she thought. Instead of handing Lash more grant money, “they pulled out files and told me my package would be a little lower next year since my family had made $1,000 more. I was blown away.” Lacking funds to stay at Harvard, Lash continues to look at Universities in Italy, France, and Spain.

Divorce is one “special circumstance” frequently presented to the financial aid committee. Illness is certainly another. Jessica Matthews ’04, a Winthrop House resident, covers over $32,000 of her expenses through loans each year, partly due to her mother’s breast cancer. “Although the cancer is currently in remission, my mother has no sick days left from when she was recovering. It is incredibly hard for her to miss work. This causes stress when she needs to go get check-ups. She also had to have another surgery last March and had to use personal days in order to recover. I don’t know what we will do if her cancer comes back.”

The stress of medical and college bills has taken a toll on Matthews’ parents. “My dad is very tense all the time when finances come up. He feels like he can’t go on vacation or do anything special because money is so tight. I think the fact that he can no longer save for retirement scares him as well.” Rather than contributing to their own retirement funds, Matthews’ mother, a high school special education teacher, and father, a sales director, pinch and save to help Matthews pay off the $140,000 debt she will have amassed by 2004.

Although Matthews knew financing Harvard would be difficult prior to enrolling, her father “had faith that a school with an $18 billion endowment would come through with some financial aid.” Like Lash, receiving her award statement brought little comfort. “My family’s finances look much better on paper; even with the mitigating circumstances of my mother’s cancer and other issues, the financial aid committee gave us nothing. I can’t even describe how upset we all were when I got that letter. There weren’t even words. And this year, my dad called and he wrote letters and provided documentation about the hardship that loans were causing. The financial aid committee didn’t change anything at all. I feel like a faceless number to them, like personal circumstances aren’t considered at all.”

As a result of her lackluster package, Matthews must work “full-time all summer, every summer. This past summer I only took two weekends off. I started working right when I got home from school and worked until the day before I came back here.” Matthews’ responsibility to work prevents her from participating in summer programs that interest her. “I would love to take advantage of the Middlebury College language school or their creative writing summer program, but I can’t because I need to work to help pay tuition for books, my computer and everything else. My summer money is how I survive in Cambridge.” Regardless of how students would like to spend their summer, the financial aid committee requires that they make money. “Maybe you have the opportunity for a volunteer internship at the state legislature or a month-long trip with the school band to England. In any of these cases, whether the situation is by choice or not, you are still expected to have the summer earnings figure [listed on the award letter] available for school expenses,” she adds.

Rebecca Stump ’04 can sympathize. “There is still a $24,000 discrepancy between what Harvard thinks I can pay and what my family actually can.” As a result of this discrepancy, Stump spends any extra time she has at Harvard working instead of pursuing her passion for singing. “In high school all I did was sing,” she says. But balancing eight to 12 hours of work at Widener library each week, a board position in a community service organization, and a reading-intensive Social Studies concentration forced her to give it up. Beyond singing, her mandatory job detracts from her academic experience. “It really affects my studies. I have to work, and if I don’t I can’t get plane tickets home and I can’t buy books. One time last year it was reading period for final exams and in order to go home for spring break I had to work for 36 hours.”

School expenses leave Stump with almost no money for other recreational or personal expenses—movies, futons and dinners out with friends. Sall Donahue and the Financial Aid office retort that they include a predetermined amount in every student’s “expected contribution” to cover personal expenses. However, Donahue admits to using “a modest personal allowance in deciding how much aid you will receive. Obviously, you can’t buy lots of music, furniture for your room, or a new wardrobe and stay within this conservative limit. Our advice is to be cautious about your spending since you are on a tight budget which must be controlled carefully.”

More disturbing to Stump is that her financial troubles have predetermined her future pursuits. “By the time I get out of Harvard, I will be approximately $100,000 in debt.” This bill will restrict Stump from entering graduate school immediately after college. “There are times that I wish that I had gone to an in-state school basically for free. Then I could have saved my money for a really good graduate school instead of struggling to finance Harvard and not getting to go to graduate school at all.”

Still, the school defends the use of loans and term-time jobs. “We encourage students to work in order to keep their indebtedness at a reasonable level. Our graduates have excellent prospects for jobs and a very low default rate on their loans so we feel that some use of student loans is a reasonable way to help cover costs.”

This reassurance doesn’t calm Matthews. Debt incurred through massive loans is interfering with her future plans as well. “I’m very interested in education. For me, that would involve graduate school.” But Matthews knows her loans must be paid off before accrued interest puts her family deeper in the hole. “I’m a Religion concentrator. I’m not interested in becoming an investment banker. I think about it all the time.”

As if the stress of paying bills weren’t enough, pressure to succeed academically can be intensified by feelings of guilt. Christine M. Murray ’04 feels obligated to do well because of her family’s multiple sacrifices. This past spring after her father lost his job, Murray received a financial aid package identical to last year’s package when her father was employed. “They told me I will have to reapply mid-year.”

In order to pay off this semester, Murray’s family has sold 40 acres of their soybean farm. Worse still, Murray has watched her parents’ relationship deteriorate. “I’m always on the lookout for marital strain.” Last weekend Murray’s parents drove from Michigan to talk to her. “They told me we have no money left. How can I not work hard in school when my family is losing its farm? I feel like I should be selling my eggs or something. It’s all I think about when I’m not worrying about grades,” she says.

Although Lash often experiences the same guilt, she sticks by her decision to attend Harvard. “There are some things you get here that you really can’t put a price on. Getting exposed to the East coast. Getting a Harvard name. My mom came from Mexico. Her family had nothing and she managed to go to college. My family has a we-can-do-it attitude.” And they’ll be doing it without requesting additional support from Byerly Hall. “There is a lot of lingering bitterness. I really haven’t felt like I could go back.”