Towards A More Equal Harvard: Examining the Next Frontier of Financial Aid Progress

Although education is often proclaimed to be the guarantor of social quality, it all too often can lead to a further divergence between different classes. Before their fourth birthdays, low-income children will have heard on average 30 million fewer words than their wealthier counterparts. The gap only widens throughout the course of the their education. Low-income students cannot afford pre-school. Once in elementary school, reading abilities and test scores continue to diverge. More affluent parents can afford enriching summer experiences, while less wealthy students stay home. Low-income students cannot afford SAT tutors once in high school. All told, upper income families (defined as making more than $106,450 annually) spend $95,550 on childcare and education raising a child to 18. Lower income families (defined as making less than $61,530 annually) spend $35,550 on childcare and education.
These facts are nothing new to us. We understand that students from lower incomes fight against a series of disadvantages to get into Harvard. However, conventional wisdom holds that once low-income students gain entrance to Harvard, they are finally able to close the advantage gap between them and their wealthier peers.
Unfortunately, this is not entirely the case. While recent financial aid initiatives have been successful in getting more lower income students through the door and providing them with support once here, the student work contribution still prevents many from taking advantage of all the resources Harvard has to offer. These student contributions amount to approximately $6,000 a year for upperclassmen on financial aid. The requirement places a strain on students who are already at a disadvantage to their classmates; while their friends participate in resume-building extracurriculars and summer internships, many students on financial aid find themselves working to pay what is a trivial amount from Harvard’s perspective. Harvard has led higher education to unprecedented equality over the past decade, and now with student work contributions, Harvard has the ability to lead once again.
Creating Barriers
Although a Harvard student’s work contribution will vary based on year and aid package, it is usually around $6,000 annually for students on financial aid. Around 60 percent of students are on financial aid at Harvard. Thus, the cost of removing the term time and summer work requirement would be approximately $24 million. This works out to approximately 0.00005 percent of Harvard’s $36.4 billion endowment. Even if this projected cost were an underestimate by a factor of ten, or a hundred, it would still be a miniscule investment for the University. Despite the minimal impact that reducing the work requirement would have for Harvard, it would have a tremendous impact for many students on financial aid.
The cost factor, however, is likely not the primary motivation for the University to mandate work requirements. Sally Donahue, Director of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, elaborated on the potential benefits of the work requirement in an interview with the HPR. When asked about the prospect of removing student contributions, Donahue responded that it was unlikely, claiming, “It is beneficial for students to invest in their education.” She then added that the student contribution has been massively reduced compared to the past. “If you go back to 15 years ago, students were expected to contribute $7,500, so they used to have to both work and borrow,” she stated. Additionally, proponents of keeping the student contribution would argue that summer and term-time work experiences are enriching, rewarding, and can lead to personal growth.
These ideas all have merit. It is true that many students on financial aid may find their current term time jobs or summer jobs to be particularly enriching and worthwhile experiences. Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez ’17 finds her current jobs as a research assistant and a STRIDE recipient from PBHA to be rewarding. “I love my jobs this year because this is what I can see myself doing in the future. But the work culture here is different than other schools.” Vasquez-Rodriguez elaborated, saying that there is social pressure to be highly involved in extracurricular activities and students who work are less common than at other schools. In this case, removing work requirements does not prevent students from working jobs they find rewarding. They may still work if they choose to. The key issue is one of choice. Students on financial aid must be afforded the same level of choice in their education as their more affluent peers if the opportunity gap is to be closed.
In an interview with the HPR, Avani Mehta, Coordinator of Yale’s Students Unite Now movement (which is currently protesting a similar work requirement at Yale) asserted that the work contribution “creates two unequal experiences, which break down along class as well as racial lines.” Students who ask for a reduction or removal of student contributions are not apathetically divesting themselves from their education. Rather, the request is borne of a desire to be even more fully immersed in their education. Vasquez-Rodriguez adds, “I believe that investing in your education is not just something you do monetarily. Investment is also determined by how much effort you put into your education.” Students on financial aid wish to be able to explore their intellectual curiosities more fully through extracurricular activities and summer experiences.
While students also have the option of taking loans in lieu of making the student contribution through work, if students did decide to take full loans all four years, they would be saddled with around $20,000 of debt. Granted, taking out loans is uncommon according to the directors of HFAI (only around 25 percent of students opt for it). And even when students do, they presumably take out less than the theoretical maximum of $20,000. However, any level of debt is an additional disadvantage that low-income students must face, when Harvard has the means to easily close this particular advantage gap. While Harvard students collectively receive more than $12 million every year in outside scholarships, which can take the place of student contributions, these tend to be concentrated in the freshman year and fall precipitously in following years. The fact is that most students choose to meet the work requirement by working, which can seriously impede their ability to enrich their education.
Continuing to Lead the Revolution Onwards
When Harvard speaks, other universities listen. As an enormously influential institution in American and world higher education, Harvard has a unique social responsibility. In 2004, President Summers announced the inception of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, a groundbreaking program that actively sought to hasten the conversion of Harvard from a bastion of privilege to a meritocratic beacon. According to Donahue, following the announcement, across higher education “there was a movement towards simplifying language, lowering parent contributions, and adding explicit and easy to understand explanations of aid.”
Now is a critical time for Harvard to push other universities in the right direction as the movement to remove work contributions gains momentum. The University of Chicago announced an ambitious plan earlier this year in the No Barriers program, which seeks to lower the obstacles that low-income students face in higher education. The movement has not been limited to one campus, as the Students Unite Now movement at Yale has also mobilized the campus to reduce work contributions. Last week, this group rallied outside administrative buildings at Yale and delivered a petition with 1,000 student signatures to the president and 17 other administrators to protest the student work contribution. If Harvard were to further lower student contributions or remove them entirely, it could lend unstoppable momentum to this movement.
One decade after the initiation of HFAI, it has become possible to analyze its effects. Donahue points to more than a “30 percent increase in lower income families since 2004” and surveys showing “students increasingly noting diverse conversations on campus” as evidence of the program’s success. Certainly on a nationwide basis, Harvard is at the head of the pack in terms of financial aid offerings. Approximately 60 percent of Harvard students receive financial aid, and the average grant is over $40,000 per year for students who do receive aid. Since its beginning, the program has remained dynamic and continually expanded opportunities. In fact, while the zero parent contribution package was initially available to students with family incomes below $40,000 annually, it was later expanded to apply to anyone with a family income below $65,000 annually. In addition, HFAI works closely with student groups on campus to help their plans come to fruition, and points to the new First Generation Students Union and a recently developed app called “Shoestring Strategies for Life at Harvard” that instructs students on how to live on a budget in Cambridge. In ten years, HFAI has helped neutralize the opportunity gap between students of different backgrounds.
The inexorable march of education has been towards greater equality. In the past decade, the process has begun moving even faster, led by universities like Harvard. Each change has unequivocally moved Harvard’s campus towards greater equality. Reducing or removing student contributions represents a way to push this frontier even further. In 2007, when announcing the expansion of financial aid for middle class families, Harvard President Drew Faust said, “Education is the engine that makes American democracy work… And it has to work, and that means people have to have access.” The expansion represented the best financial aid policy in the country, and it forced other institutions to follow. In this instance, Harvard has the opportunity to continue to push the frontier of financial aid across American higher education by reducing or removing the work contribution.
Image credit: Perry Abdulkadir