For some families, Harvard University just got a little bit cheaper. The Ivy League institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts—which costs about $83,000 annually in 2024—recently announced tuition will be free for families whose income is below $200,000 per year. If you’re a family whose household income is less than $100,00, the venerated institution will basically pay for everything. And I do mean everything: tuition, housing, fees, travel costs, event and activity fees– and if you need some cold weather gear to adjust to the Boston winters, Harvard is covering that, too. They’ll even give you a $2,000 start-up grant to get you situated; all you have to do is get in.
Harvard has something like 52 billion dollars in endowment. It could afford to pay for all students tuition from just the return on the endowment.
You still have to apply and get accepted. This is what kills me about people thinking government-paid college is a degree mill. No, you have to get in in the first place, and you must work hard to stay in.
lol nepo school offers free tuition to students it won’t even let in if they paid
Big picture, this is positive news.
That said, I doubt the Admissions and Bursar’s offices are isolated from each other.
I see no reason to believe there aren’t donors making their feelings known that there is a limit to how far the university can go with this. I’m thinking of the Jurassic Park lawyer smugly saying “We could have a coupon day.”
Isn’t the median income in the US 40k?
So 50% of the US could attend?!
More like 90%. But I guess youd need the necessary grades to even apply.
🤣 I guess my grades wouldn’t suffice with those kind of misstakes
Harvard, here we come!
Wow. That is actually pretty cool to hear!
Wow! Sweet! I would TOTALLY go to Harvard…if I weren’t so stupid. They’d never take me in.
This kind of policy was always a better idea than DEI.
This literally is DEI.
I’ve never seen “poor” as included under DEI.
Sure, just without the racism. Ask a low-income Asian-American what they think of DEI.
PS: Yeah, you can downvote but that’s not actually a response. If you defend DEI in college admissions, you defend racism. It really is as simple as that. Harvard is doing things better at last, the way things are done in more civilized countries than the USA. That is: help people because they are POOR, not because they belong to some BS pseudoscientific category defined by their skin color.
Not American here: isn’t a large proportion of the USA’s impoverished population made up of immigrants and people of colour?
So… Would that make poverty BS a pseudoscientific category (partly) defined by skin colour?
Firstly “people of color” is, yes, a BS pseudoscientific category which is not recognized outside the USA and a few other countries in its cultural orbit.
Poverty is above all correlated with access to economic capital. If “people of color” are poor, and it’s important to you to help “people of color” (rather than poor people), then you should be pleased, because Harvard is helping them. Personally, I care about helping poor people regardless of their genetic or dermatological characteristics.
Okay, so since you don’t recognise that people of colour are a thing outside of America…
Is it not a DEI program to provide Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive school admissions to the poor.
They mean the term “people of colour” is BS.
And I agree. “Coloured people” is offensive but “people of colour” isn’t?
I roll my eyes so hard I see my brain every time I hear it.
The gays vs Gays
The blacks vs Blacks
The poors vs the poor
Coloured People vs People of Colour
that people of colour are a thing outside of America
They’re not a thing anywhere. It’s pseudoscience based on America’s unusual history.
Is it not a DEI program to provide Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive school admissions to the poor.
Not sure what point this is making. Diversity and inclusion of values, or viewpoints, say, is a decent and valuable goal. But what it means in America is diversity of skin color. Which is only interesting if one is a racist (very literally) - as it seems many American progressives are, deep down. I’m talking about the racism of low expectations - the belief that poor little dark-skinned people can’t make it on their own (despite all the evidence) and need special treatment.
People of colour aren’t a thing anywhere? Damn, gotta inform like… 6.5 billion people they don’t exist.
Do you fail to see how people of certain socioeconomic backgrounds and racial backgrounds may have different values and viewpoints thus making them worthy of inclusion by virtue of having different values and viewpoints?
Like… I feel like you’re focused on the racial background of this while ignoring the fact that -to paraphrase you- Poor little Mayo kids will also benefit from DEI practices that admit people based on personal experience over “qualification”.
Isn’t part of the American dream that anyone, of any make and model can find opportunity if they talk to the right person?
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