Harvard's Financial Aid Reforms
Much has been made in the last three weeks about Harvard's decision to reduce the financial cost of attending for students from families with incomes up to $180,000 per year. Consider this article in yesterday's New York Times and a typical reaction in a Dartmouth-focused blog. I think most of the hype is overblown, particularly if it is just Harvard making this switch.
Suppose that Harvard's changes to its financial aid policies don't change the pool of applicants it receives. Then the policy simply amounts to a transfer from Harvard to some upper middle class families who send their children there, and there is no reason for any other college to change its behavior. So the impact of the policy is in the change it induces in the applicant pool to Harvard and the improvements that allows Harvard to make in its incoming class.
Who are these additional applicants? Upper middle class students who previously didn't apply to Harvard because, even if they got in, they lacked the financial resources (or the desire to spend them) to attend but who would attend under the new financial aid policies.
I'll conjecture that very few of these students are now applying to, say, Dartmouth. Compared to Harvard, Dartmouth has about the same cost, a financial aid policy that is no more generous than the Harvard's old policy, and an academic reputation that is no better than Harvard's. If financial costs were a barrier at Harvard, then they were a barrier at Dartmouth as well. So if Dartmouth chose not to match Harvard's new policy, I don't see why it would lose students out of its current applicant pool. And what's true of Dartmouth is true of colleges that are presently even less competitive with Harvard, making the opening to the New York Times article about Dickinson College a bit far-fetched. The article does identify the colleges that will see their applicant pools change:
In the competitive scramble for prestige and rankings, numerous colleges already try to lure some top students away from the Ivy League by showering them with “merit aid” even if they are well off and can afford full tuition.
The price of buying a better class just went up, so these colleges will have to modify their behavior if they still want to compete in this way. Let's assume that the higher prices discourage some (even if not all) of this behavior, generating a better applicant pool at Harvard. The better applicant pool, in turn, means a better set of applicants who do not get into Harvard. Some of the students induced to apply will get the spots that would have otherwise gone to other applicants, presumably of all financial backgrounds given Harvard's need-blind admissions policy.
And where will these newly denied applicants go? To their second-choice schools, which will include Dartmouth in some cases. So one impact of Harvard's change in financial aid on colleges like Dartmouth is that it allows them to also be more selective, even without changing their own financial aid policies.
This impact is offset to the extent that there are students admitted to both Harvard and Dartmouth that would choose Dartmouth if both cost the same but Harvard under its new financial aid policies. If it's just Harvard, then I'll conjecture again that this is a small number of students. If other colleges, very few of whom are more competitive with Harvard than is Dartmouth, follow Harvard's lead, then the set of admitted students who might be lost to their second-choice colleges will go up to the point that it would be difficult to maintain a higher price and the same quality of matriculating student.
So it is not Harvard's behavior that is important--it is the behavior of the large number of colleges that consider themselves competitors to Harvard.
4 comments:
It's all PR, no actual effect on incoming students. There will be no changes to the Harvard applicant pool because there are simply no students who have any reasonable chance to get into Harvard that don't currently apply.
The factor that is so different today than even 5 years ago is the pervasive use of the Common Application, which leads the AVERAGE applicant to apply to 8-10 schools -- and people with plenty of money ($180k qualifies!) to apply to 15-20. The reason the acceptance rates at the HYP axis have dropped below 10% is that every single possible student applies to all 3 in the hopes that one of them will be willing to say "yes". (This is not unreasonable given the total randomness of examining 20,000 advisor-influenced applications that could all be the same person). All it costs is another $70, and even that can be waived if you've provided proof of need to the College Board.
The huge siren call of the "Harvard Brand" gives them a matriculation rate of those they accept well over 90%, and the ones who don't come are going to Princeton, Yale, or MIT. I challenge anyone to find a student who goes to a second tier school over Harvard simply because of the money. So, no change in applicant pool and no change in matriculation rates...therefore, no effect.
Now, onto the other schools. Ask yourself...would a kid go to even Dartmouth for half price if she got into HYP? A few, maybe. Williams/Amherst? I doubt it, but it's possible. Dickenson? C'mon.
BG had an interesting OpEd on this a couple of days ago:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/12/31/the_real_story_on_harvards_generosity/
With more than 35 billion in endowment, Harvard is in a position to buy/build a satellite university.
By building their application base now (everybody will apply to Harvard, on the chance they get the great deal on tuition) they can maintain the selectivity (admit 10% of 60,000 applicants vs. 10% of 20,000 apps) and grow their numbers.
I can envision Harvard opening a college (perhaps buying the facility private college on the west coast or in the midwest), drawing top teaching talent, and immediately filling all seats. Top students in the midwest, south, etc. currently don't apply to Harvard for many reasons (geographic location, lack of familiarity, inability to make a campus visit, perception that they don't have a chance, cost, etc). This is a huge untapped market of extremely high achievers.
Don't think they'd do it? Look at the new business model of Mayo Clinic. They have built very successful satellite facilities, staffed with seasoned Mayo doctors, using the Mayo methods and bringing best in patient care to locations outside Minnesota.
Harvard is also watching as top students, easily Harvard quality, are flocking to second and third tier schools because Harvard simply doesn't have the capacity to serve all who merit and could benefit from a "Harvard education".
There is more going on here than meets the eye.
Peer institutions need to keep in step.
And everyone assumes the middle class student isn't applying because of money...perhaps its because of the great class divide, more the social part and less than the economic part. My son's applying because he received a recruitment letter outlining the financial aid package, he's probably in the middle of the curve of the typical applicants on paper, but his IQ is probably on the higher end of the tail. My fear? That Harvard isn't actually going to accept these middle class (those of us falling under the $60K a year cut) applicants because we don't have the resources to savvy up our applications like some of these private schools applicants. Then, they'll be taking our application fees. I'm supporting his application because his SATs fall within the midrange, his GPA is OK, blah blah, blah, but really, I worry, not that his intellect won't be within his peer group, but that the diversity that he brings, being completely BLUE COLLARED working class family will not be accepted. Who wants their child to be ostracized for any reason. Will he pick up the right fork at lunch? Will he have the right clothes? Does he have the right heritage? CLASSISM is a reality for those of us dwelling in the midrange, and plays far more into our decisions of where we should "BE".
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