Spare Change

Next to the four diverse, smiling faces on the Harvard College Financial Aid Office Web site is a prominent statement: “Helping You Meet Your Needs.” Peruse the site further and you will find it is replete with reminders of the financial might of an institution supported by a multi-billion dollar endowment.

Harvard’s recent wave of Financial Aid reforms include sweeping measures that have allowed students from low-income families to afford an Ivy League education. The Harvard Financial Aid Initiative has eliminated the entire cost of attendance for students whose annual family income is below $60,000. The most recent financial aid measures have extended these benefits to the middle class: the FAO has eliminated loans and the use of home equity as means to finance educational costs, and has also reduced the cost of attendance to 10 percent of income for families with incomes of up to $180,000.

These measures have allowed Harvard to compete with public institutions by often providing more generous financial aid. “Harvard was the best offer I got, actually,” said Ashlee N. Adams ’12, “Even with the financial aid offers I got from state schools in Texas, Harvard was still cheaper.”

Only a few hundred meters from Harvard Yard, in her secluded office on Brattle Street, Director of Financial Aid Sally C. Donahue presides over the generous aid program. With the worst financial crisis in over 50 years, Donahue’s office has taken on new significance given the effects of the crisis on many Harvard families.

“We are certainly talking to a lot of families,” she says, nodding her head, “but it’s not really all that different for us right now because we have always done that.” While her office is keeping track of a flurry of phone calls, at last count only 50 families had been in touch with their officers, not nearly the number one would expect in the current storm of job loss and healthcare reduction.

The Financial Aid office started doing internal research to prepare for an initiative that would help lower- and middle -income families five years ago. “In some ways we responded to the economic crisis early,” Donahue says. “Without the initiative we would have been hearing from a lot more families.”

At the time, Donahue and her associates had perceived that the costs of healthcare, energy, food, and other necessities were rising, and they wanted to make sure that their program was able to respond. While the first initiative was aimed at making a Harvard education accessible, the second was meant to make it affordable. Together these two measures began attracting a new kind of student: one who has worked his way through high school, one who babysat for her neighbors, and one whose parents can’t afford to cover their undergraduate educations.

These students, once they arrive, are naturally drawn to the Student Employment Office. SEO Director Meg B. Swift says that an increasing number of students are searching for jobs: “We definitely see that there are lots of students who’ve been working in high school. Anecdotally, we’re finding that there are a lot of jobs out there and a lot of students looking for jobs.”

These jobs are divided into two categories: those paid for by the Federal Work Study Program and those that aren’t. Although FWSP jobs benefit these students, perhaps they benefit those that employ them even more. While the employers are obliged to provide 30 cents on the dollar to their students, the federal government covers the rest. One-third of the SEO’s jobs fall under this category and include much sought-after on-campus ones, such as library positions.

But according to Swift, an unfortunate side affect of Harvard’s new financial aid program is that there is less FWSP eligibility. Instead, today only 20 percent of those on financial aid are eligible for the program, down from 40 percent last year. This is especially disturbing at a time when more students than ever are looking for work, making ineligible students forced to find their employment elsewhere. Swift says that the SEO hopes that Harvard may be able to resolve the problem in the future by creating a program that parallels FWSP.

But such a program cannot be conceived without changing government regulations concerning financial aid. Luckily, such regulations aren’t quite so detrimental to Harvard—an institution that can afford to replace loans with grants. But they can be disastrous for institutions that lack Harvard’s generous endowment. Professor of Eonomics Terry B. Long, who has been working with H&R Block on the FAFSA Simplification Study, says, “High levels of debt are deterring people from going to college at all.” She adds that people in the United States find it difficult to distinguish between good and bad types of debt. Some underestimate the benefits of a college education, and others have no idea of the burden they will carry until they’re out.

And such considerations will also have an impact on career choice. According to Donahue, “[Generally, non-Harvard] students are going to have to take on more debt, hurting their ability to go on to graduate school.”

We’re lucky that at the moment, Harvard’s financial situation is bearable. But in a society that has watched an institution as seemingly indestructible as Lehman Brothers collapse, nothing can be certain. Donahue insists that “there won’t be a problem with funding the scholarship program this year.” But even Donahue admits that the endowment will suffer along with the rest of the countries financial state.

As the economy worsens, fundraising has become, and is going to be, an increasingly difficult challenge. Alumni have voiced much concern about funding financial aid: their wish to establish a “rainy day fund” for scholarship holders covering them in case of crisis, is being taken seriously. Unfortunately, no one knows how long the rain will last.

This program, and the work of those in charge of Harvard’s aid programs, is essential: “Institutions of higher learning are the engines of mobility,” Donahue says. “Make them unaffordable and we’re not making a good investment in our country’s future.”

“We have no plans to change it,” she says in respect to financial aid. Furthermore, and luckily, “We will continue to respond.”