How will schools help fund families?
How exactly do all the schools start to help poor families, or even middle class?
Harvard took the lead. Two years ago, Harvard implemented a policy in which students whose parents earn a $60,000 or less no longer pay for tuition or room and board. Stanford has just adopted the same policy, adding that students whose parents earn $100,000 must only pay room and board. Stanford Financial Aid has not provided a formula for evaluating aid for students who come from families with income over $100,000.
Princeton has taken a similar approach in which it evaluates aid on a case by case basis rather than the more formulaic sliding scales that Yale and Harvard have decided to use. At Stanford and Princeton, students in the income bracket range between $60,000-100,000 can expect to pay $11,000 or less, approximately the cost of room and board.
But at Harvard and Yale, students in the income range $60,000-120,000 can expect only to pay on a sliding scale between 1 and 10% of their income ($600-12,000), which is significantly less than students at Stanford. Students at Harvard and Yale from income brackets between $120,000 and $180,000 can expect to pay between $12,000-18,000. Cooper has refused to make comparisons between higher income students at Stanford and Harvard, saying she does not want to mislead them about their potential aid package. She cautioned that aid will be evaluated on an individual basis with a number of factors including home equity, other siblings in college, and cost of living taken into account.
The new financial aid policy isolates the upper-middle class. Universities are increasing tuition fees for students who do not receive financial aid. It is called “Take from the Rich and Give to the Poor”. While the financial aid policies have made it less expensive than some state schools for students from households less than $100,000, colleges generally remains much more expensive for students from households with income well over $100,000. State schools also usually offer merit aid, which can often significantly decrease the expense for top students.