Policy Change Targets Grad Student Aid

The University has begun the first wave of initiatives to raise money for graduate student aid and encourage public service, University President Lawrence H. Summers said yesterday.

Alums from the wealthiest of Harvard’s schools will be solicited to donate to a new University Fund for Graduate Student Aid, Summers said. And, for the first time, formal incentives will be created to encourage these donors to support priorities at the University’s smaller and less financially flush schools.

The changes were hinted at in a speech Summers delivered to alums at a banquet before the Harvard-Yale Game and will be publicized in a letter to donors some time this week.

They come as an alteration to the “class credit policy”—obscure, but much debated rules that govern what donations will count toward a reunion class’ fundraising total.

According to University officials, the tool of class credit is used to harness donors’ competitive impulses while directing their attention to top fundraising priorities.

Reunion classes at the College, Law and Business schools are encouraged to out-fundraise fellow classes and break donation records set in previous years.

But up until now, only donations targeting a school-specific list of “Dean’s priorities” were given credit.

Now credit will be used to encourage a relatively wider set of priorities.

“All gifts for financial aid University-wide will receive credit,” Summers said.

In addition, gifts of more than $250,000 for professorships and academic priorities at the Schools of Design, Divinity, Education, Government and Public Health will receive credit, Summers said.

The priorities will be determined by the deans of those schools in consultation with the president and provost.

The result will be that for the first time, an alum of the College will receive credit for donations to Harvard’s other schools.

According to the text of the policy, one goal of the change is to “raise funds for the Harvard schools whose missions are public-service oriented and/or whose graduates are predominantly in fields that do not enable them to adequately support their schools with gifts.”

Credit will also be used to raise money to fund inter-school collaborations and will be given for donations of more than $250,000 to the president and provost’s University Academic Innovation Fund.

The policy states that the president, in collaboration with the deans, may change the list of credit-gaining donations as priorities are further defined.

Yesterday, Summers and other administrators called the changes a first step in fulfilling promises Summers made at his inauguration to put graduate student financial aid on par with aid at the College and improve funding for schools that prepare students for careers in public service.

Over the course of the last year, Summers has polled the various schools as to their aid needs and how they would use new funds. Academic deans from several schools said recently they were still awaiting word from the administration about when funding would arrive.

Summers said yesterday that, in addition to the class credit change, other initiatives on graduate student financial aid were still being developed, but he declined to elaborate. According to administration officials, a capital campaign targeting this priority is among several fundraising options being considered.

The changes to class credit also fit with another of Summers’ oft-mentioned pledges—to break down traditional divides between the University’s fiercely autonomous schools.

The changes represent a success for Summers in light of both this goal and earlier unsuccessful attempts to liberalize class credit policy.

According to University officials, when then-Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 broached the topic of expanding class credit in the 1990s, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the other wealthier schools resisted.

These schools argued that widening class credit would dull an important fundraising tool and cost them millions of dollars.

While the current effort required several months of negotiations, Summers described the debate as thoughtful and uncontentious.

Nowhere evident yesterday were the concerns that torpedoed the earlier attempt to change the policy.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said he was satisfied with the changes.

“I’ve always felt we in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are part of a broader University,” Kirby said.

He added that he was not worried that the changes would undercut FAS’ abilities to fundraise. “We have a president who is very focused on the College [and] an alumni body second to none in devotion,” Kirby said. “[The change] simply expands the number of options open to those who wish to give gifts.”

Summers said the deans were unanimous in their support both of the policy and its underlying intents.

“I think the feeling that all the deans had and that I certainly had is that it’s important to continue to set priorities but that priorities should be set on a University-wide basis,” Summers said. “Many supporters of the University are eager to support things that are going on in parts of the University other than the part they graduated from.”

Summers said that the change is not an attack on the autonomy of the schools.

“I don’t think of it in that way,” he said. “I think about it being about allowing the University to function in a cooperative way.”

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.