Harvard Joins in White House Effort To Make College Education More Affordable and Accessible

Harvard was among dozens of institutions of higher learning to renew and share its efforts to reach out to potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds last week, as a part of President Barack Obama’s ongoing initiative to make college education more affordable and accessible.

The University’s support of the initiative came despite the fact that University President Drew G. Faust was unable to attend the discussion, which was part of a summit on higher education at the White House last Thursday, Jan. 16 that attracted leaders from across academia and is a key part of the President’s emerging agenda for national education.

Faust was originally scheduled to attend the event, slated for Dec. 11, but had to change her plans after it was postponed.

“[W]e are here for one purpose: We want to make sure more young people have the chance to earn a higher education. And in the 21st century economy, we all understand it’s never been more important,” Obama said at the summit.

Among the efforts pledged by Harvard was a commitment to hire new staff in the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid dedicated to reaching out primarily to minority students. The University also plans to extend its use of social media to help inform more students.

In addition, University representatives will join counterparts from Princeton, the University of Virginia, and Yale to give joint-information sessions to students in areas of the United States that do not typically draw many applications to their institutions starting in the fall, the Yale Daily News reported last week.

The pledges are in addition to Harvard College Connection, an outreach program that the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid introduced in October that aims to use social media and other online platforms to help low-income students have better access to college admissions and financial aid information.

Other institutions, including public, private, and community colleges, offered their own pledges to not only reach out to low-income students but also to expand advising programs when students arrive on campus.

Obama noted that in addition to plans from colleges and different organizations that his administration will seek to combat the increasing costs of higher education.

“I’m going to be working with Congress where I can to accomplish this, but I’m also going to act on my own if Congress is deadlocked,” Obama said. “I’ve got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won’t, and I’ve got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission.”

Some pundits urged caution over the plans offered at the summit and spoke about the limitations and difficulties of trying to reach out and enroll more low-income students.

Parke P. Muth, a former associate dean of admissions and director of international admissions at UVA who now runs his own college consulting company and blog, noted that many colleges and universities simply do not have the funds that Harvard and other top-tier schools do to invest in financial aid.

“Harvard is a very small place that has a lot of resources, but not everybody can go there,” said Muth. “I don’t see anything saying here is money [to fund expanded financial aid].”

According to Muth, that means that in the absence of new funding, tuition will have to rise to compensate for increases in financial aid, causing certain groups of applicants, specifically middle-class students from suburban regions, to be squeezed out of a class. In addition, he said, increased socioeconomic diversity can come at the cost of other types of diversity like ethnicity.

Obama himself acknowledged the difficulties of reaching out to low-income students but said that the importance of a college education makes confronting such difficulties necessary.

“We have to make sure that there are new ladders of opportunity into the middle class, and that those ladders—the rungs on those ladders are solid and accessible for more people,” said Obama, himself a graduate of Harvard Law School.

—Staff writer Matthew Q. Clarida contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Theodore R. Delwiche can be reached at tdelwiche@college.harvard.edu.