When Parents Will Not Pay

When parents refuse to pay Harvard tuition, undergraduates and Harvard administrators can find themselves in a difficult situation.

Take Jessica. After her parents told her that they wouldn’t pay their expected contribution, she enrolled at Harvard anyway. Here, she has spent three-and-a-half years studying as a full-time student at the College and working multiple jobs, sometimes totalling up to 40 hours of work a week.

Jessica, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, is one of a handful of students at the College whose parents have refused to pay the expected parent contribution included in their financial aid packages. Though Jessica’s parents, one of whom is a doctor, do not contribute to the cost of her education, the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid still insists that she pay between $16,000 to $20,000 a year out of her own pocket.

“The College’s attitude is ‘your dad is a doctor, why aren’t your parents helping?’ In that sense, it can be really frustrating,” Jessica said of her situation. “Just because the parent contribution is called the parent contribution, you don’t know about my family.”

Still, Jessica and others who face similar situations recognize that a parent refusing to pay tuition is a problem with no easy solution.

Director of Financial Aid Sally C. Donahue says her office works to be “fair and equitable,” aiming to support students whose parents will not contribute to the cost of tuition. But Harvard—and many other colleges with generous financial aid offerings—make students undergo a rigorous process that includes counseling before considering waiving the family’s financial obligations to the school. Donahue says conflicts between parents and their children rarely reach the point where the University accepts that a parent will not pay.

ACCEPTING THE DEBT

Two thirds of Harvard students will graduate from the College with no debt. That won’t be the case for Jessica.

Four years ago—before she ever sat down to eat in Annenberg Hall—her parents told her that they wouldn’t pay for her to go to Harvard. After all, she had already been offered generous scholarships from a number of top tier universities. Several schools even gave her a full ride. But, Jessica said, it had to be Harvard.

Looking for advice and help getting student loans, Jessica communicated with Harvard’s Financial Aid Office.

“I found they were judging. What would have been ideal is that they didn’t pass judgment,” Jessica said. “Frankly, it’s none of their business.”

Ultimately, Jessica estimated that she will graduate with between $10,000 and $20,000 in debt, after spending a summer at a top-tier consulting firm and holding down several term-time jobs.

Every week students visit the Financial Aid Office to report new and extenuating circumstances concerning their financial aid package, according to Donahue. While these cases take a variety of forms, Donahue said that the office works with students and families on an individual basis to reach a solution.

“There are a number of situations that can arise that alienate students from their families,” Donahue said. “There’s no formula because you really have to deal with each one these situations individually. Many students are away from home for the first time and are growing in directions that parents might not approve. Consequently, there are bound to be conflicts that arise between students and parents, some of a more severe nature than others.”

In cases where there is an extreme rift between students and parents, the Financial Aid Office refers students to University Health Services and the Bureau of Study Council in hopes that these offices can work to a resolution of the problem.

“Our top priorities, and the top priorities of Harvard College, are the students’ health and well-being and their continued enrollment,” Donahue said. “Family dynamics can be incredibly explosive and complex and the resources necessary to support students in these situations often extend well beyond the Financial Aid Office.”

A report by Center for American Progress on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender on financial aid issues, however, criticizes an unspecified Ivy League university for requiring students to attend such counseling. In the report, a student named Colin—whose parents cut him off financially after he came out as gay—alleges that the Ivy League university required a psychologist to sign off on his sanity. In the report, he said that entire process “absolutely terrified me.”

Representatives of University Health Services did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Donahue said that students can access loans to cover the cost of continued enrollment at the College even while other offices work with students and their families.

“There have only been a small handful of occasions in which it has been deemed by the collection of offices working with a particular student that the situation was completely irreconcilable,” Donahue said. “Those situations are real exceptions and ones that take a significant amount of time and conversations and resources to make that decision.”

Donahue said that she is not aware of a student leaving the College in the last decade as a result of inability to pay caused by parental conflict.

Still, though Harvard insists that it has a process for handling such difficult situations, the procedure can be daunting for students.

PARENTAL ORDERS

Marsha, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, came out as gay in the spring of her freshman year. After returning home for the summer, her parents told her that they had decided to stop paying her tuition and that she would have to find something new to do when her summer job ended.

“It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I cried myself to sleep every night,” she said. “I just had no idea what I would do when the summer was over.”

After spending the summer contemplating her future, Marsha—whose family did not receive any financial aid from Harvard—decided to join the military.

But four days before Marsha had been scheduled to return to campus, her parents informed her that they had changed their minds and that she could return to Harvard on a conditional basis. At the end of each semester, they would reconsider whether to continue paying. Among the requirements were that she improve her GPA, attend church on a regular basis, and quit her sport.

“My actual thought was sweet Jesus, I hope my parents will still pay because I guess I’m going to such debt if they don’t,” she said. “If I couldn’t complete four years at Harvard, I thought that the rest of the course of my life would be far worse than it could be.”

Concerned that her parents would change their minds, Marsha visited the Financial Aid Office where she was told that parents often use tuition as leverage when they want something from their children. Marsha said that potential plan was much like what Donahue described. Should Marsha have needed it, the Office would have offered her loans while attempting to resolve the situation.

Regardless of Harvard’s ability to deal with such situations, Marsha’s parents’ last-minute decision had been a fateful one, Marsha said. She would not have otherwise thought to reach out to the Financial Aid Office.

“Harvard puts the student in a very difficult place. It’s almost like a front that they offer so much help, because in the end you’re stuck between the institution and your parents,” Marsha said about the situation for students whose parents are hostile to their child’s sexual orientation.

This is at the heart of the issue, according to Crosby Burns, who authored the report on LGBT financial aid issues in higher education for the Center for American Progress.

“In my research ... even universities such as Harvard, while they might be progressive and give a lot of aid, they aren’t perfect,” Burns said, emphasizing that universities should do a better job explaining their policies.

The majority of students contacted by The Crimson declined to share their full stories. Still, Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of financial aid assistance website finaid.org, said that parental refusal to cooperate is a national issue. His website receives thousands of emails each year from students looking for help when their parents refuse to pay as expected, he said.

Conflicts about a student’s sexual orientation, religion, friends, or significant other are among the issues that Kantrowitz said often cause such a split.

Kantrowitz’s recommendations to students facing such situations largely coincide with the way Harvard’s Financial Aid Office handles them. Kantrowitz first recommends that students reach out to parents to try to reconcile the situation. If such an attempt is unsuccessful, he recommends that students pursue a dependency override, which lifts the student’s financial burden. To attain such an override, he said, would require documentation from a neutral third party—someone such as a social worker, teacher, or a family friend.

Although some students attain such an override, Kantorwitz said students facing a steep tuition bill with no parental support often attend community college or work for a few years in hopes of saving money before college.

Despite the unfortunate circumstances that students often face, nearly everyone The Crimson spoke with agreed that it would be difficult for the University to loosen its policy without inviting the possibility of students requesting additional assistance unnecessarily.

“Harvard always tries to be as fair as possible. In this situation they couldn’t really say because you’re gay, we’re going to help you out,” Marsha said. “They give the same treatment to every student, which they should do.”

“Our goal is to be fair and equitable across the student population,” Donahue said. “It wouldn’t be fair if we quickly said to one student, ‘Oh, your parents won’t contribute. No problem. Here you go.’ Because there are many other families in which students and parents might be working out a very difficult situation and somehow working through it.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.