Wealthy Colleges' Largess Draws Rebuke

Harvard and other wealthy universities have won praise in recent weeks for initiatives to cut costs sharply for their least affluent students. But college officials and experts in the Washington area and elsewhere have begun to complain that those well-endowed schools are playing a rich man's game that does little for the vast majority of students who can't afford rising tuition bills.

Although they applaud any financial relief for needy college students, these higher education officials say Harvard's largess puts more pressure on less affluent schools to raise tuition to support similar aid and draws attention away from other approaches -- such as sharing costs and reducing waste -- that might bring the benefits of lower tuition to more colleges and more students.

"The disparity in endowments and tuition costs can put the less well-heeled institutions, including mine, at a competitive cost disadvantage," said Andrew Flagel, dean of admissions and enrollment development at George Mason University.

Eliot Applestein, a Bethesda-based independent college counselor, said that "the top-tier colleges tend to attract the rich and famous who are seeking status" and give large donations that allow those schools to give financial breaks to more applicants. Colleges that don't attract so many rich families lack "the financial leverage to follow the lead of the Harvards of the world."

Harvard spokesman John Longbrake replied: "A great strength of American higher education is the variety of our colleges and universities and the different missions they serve. Clearly one size does not fit all, nor would one approach work for every school. We hope, though, that our new initiative will encourage other institutions that have the means to increase financial aid to do so and to call attention to the issues of access and affordability more broadly."

The recent movement to cut tuition, room and board by "the super-wealthy colleges and universities seems to be a whole lot of posturing among the mega-privileged," said William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and Robert J. Massa, Dickinson's vice president for enrollment, in a recent statement. "It is irresponsible in the long run and will drive up costs and subsequently -- for most of us -- tuition."

James A. Boyle, president of the Arlington County-based College Parents of America, said Harvard should be thanked for giving the issue a boost. "Colleges should indeed adopt more businesslike practices," Boyle said. "Rather than deal with annual budget shortfalls by simply deciding to charge more, schools should learn to do what every successful business in America has done for the past 25 years: do more with less and, where it makes sense in non-teaching functions, outsource."

The debate between the haves and the have-nots of higher education over rising tuition has been muted over the years. But the decision of some prestigious universities to substitute grants for loans for low-income students and Harvard's Dec. 10 announcement that it will reduce costs for families with annual incomes as high as $180,000 a year have brought the fight into the open. Under Harvard's plan, families earning between $60,000 and $120,000 will pay a small percentage of their annual income for tuition, room and board, rising to 10 percent for those earning between $120,000 and $180,000.

Officials at schools involved in the debate say their goal is to increase the number of low-income and minority students on their largely middle-class campuses. Offering millions of dollars in grants is fine for schools that have that kind of money in the bank, critics of the Harvard policy say, but that won't help the less affluent colleges that serve 95 percent of students.

"There are many other actions that our super-wealthy institutions could take that would likely better insure access to their institutions" for low-income students, said Scott Friedhoff, vice president for enrollment and communications at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa. "Certainly paying a little less attention to standardized test scores is an easy option."

In the past decade, according to the nonprofit College Board, published tuition and fees have risen faster than inflation -- up 4.4 percent a year for public four-year colleges, up 2.9 percent a year for private four-year colleges and up 1.5 percent a year for public two-year colleges, in each case after inflation has been accounted for.

The focus, several experts say, should be on finding new ways to cut costs. Suggestions include fewer gold-plated contracts for star professors, more sharing of costs and less competition to build the biggest new science centers to snare the best students. Such cooperative efforts to cut costs, however, require the government to back off from investigations into possible illegal price fixing, some say.