Activists Lose Battle for Free Tuition at Harvard
Why anyone thought a school with a multi-billion dollar endowment would have any interest in becoming tuition free is beyond logic.
Business Insider reports.
The fight for free tuition at Harvard just lost a major battle
Harvard alumni elected a new slot of members to the Harvard Board of Overseers on Monday — but none of them were members of “Free Harvard Fair Harvard,” a group of five men running on an aggressive platform to make Harvard free for all.
The group’s most vocal member, Ron Unz, a Harvard alumnus and former publisher of The American Conservative, expressed disappointment over the loss while highlighting the impact of his campaign.
“I do think we certainly got a lot of media coverage and focus out there about the absurd, disproportionate size of Harvard’s investment income compared to their annual tuition, and it could be that will start more pressure on the issue going forward,” Unz told the Times.
Unz had argued that eliminating tuition would make the school more diverse, as a free school would draw more low-income (predominantly minority) students.
While Harvard currently provides free tuition for any student whose family makes less than $65,000 a year, Unz believes all students should reap this benefit and points to the school’s massive endowment as a potential source.
The school’s endowment was $37.6 billion at the end of last year, making it the largest university endowment in the world. For perspective, that’s more than eight times larger than Donald Trump’s net worth, estimated at $4.5 billion, according to Forbes.
The fight for free tuition at Harvard just lost a major battle (Business Insider)
Comments
Anything can be proved if considered in isolation. Free tuition sounds like a really good deal, and the prospect of a Harvard education without life-choking levels of debt is certainly appealing. But there is a large psychology of “free stuff” that is easy to overlook. The education one receives is strongly influenced by what it costs you to receive it: you will get out of it pretty much what you put into it. If you personally have no ‘skin in the game’ you will value it less, and you will sacrifice less to achieve it, and you will walk away with less than you would if you had a driver behind you apart from you own comfort level.