Total Cost To Attend College Will Surpass $60,000

UPDATED: April 1, 2015, at 5:53 p.m.

The total cost of attending Harvard College will break $60,000 for the first time in its history. Including tuition, room, board, and other fees, the cost will increase 3.5 percent to $60,659 for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Continuing a long-term trend, the increases outpace the United States inflation rate. The total cost of attending the College was $58,607 for the 2014-2015 academic year, a 3.9 percent increase from that of the previous year—the largest increase in at least the last eight years.

Tuition, meanwhile, will increase by 3 percent to $41,632.

However, the College projects that more than half of the Class of 2019 will receive need-based aid, as the College offers financial aid through the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative. Launched by former University President Lawrence H. Summers in 2004, the initiative begins its 12th academic year in the fall.

Families making under $65,000 annually—about 20 percent of families—are not expected to contribute to the cost of attending the College.

According to Sally C. Donahue, the Griffin Director of Financial Aid, most families on financial aid pay an average of 10 percent of their income. Donahue said in a press release that families receiving aid will pay $12,000 annually on average.

Financial aid is also one of the largest priorities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’s $2.5 billion portion of the Harvard capital campaign. FAS aims to raise $600 million for financial aid in its campaign.

In February 2014, the University announced that it had received a $150 million donation from hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin ’89, at least $125 million of which would go toward financial aid scholarships in his name. The Office of Financial Aid was also renamed in Griffin’s honor.

Neither FAS Dean Michael D. Smith nor FAS Dean of Administration and Finance Leslie A. Kirwan ’79 was available for comment.

—Staff writer Karl M. Aspelund can be reached at karl.aspelund@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @kma_crimson.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 1, 2015

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated Sally C. Donahue's first name.