Just days after Stanford eliminated parental contributions for families that make less than $45,000 annually, Harvard has raised the financial aid bar yet again.
The university announced Thursday that it no longer requires parental contributions to tuition for families with incomes under $60,000.
The announcement builds on Harvard's 2004 financial aid initiative, which eliminated parental contribution for families making under $40,000 per year.
Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Penn are engaged in a cold war of financial aid offers, with each university raising the income level for which they eliminate parental contribution. Princeton, however, has stayed true to its no-loan, individually-based financial aid program since 2001.
The University has, in fact, no specific income level under which parents do not have to contribute.
"The way financial aid works at Princeton is that every case is considered on its own," Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee '69 said. "Where we begin with any applicant for financial aid is trying to figure out how much a family can afford to pay."
Durkee gave an example to highlight the risks of an income cutoff. Under a financial aid program that has a specific cutoff, a family that makes $40,000 per year and has half a million dollars in savings will receive the same benefits as a family that makes $40,000 per year but has nothing in savings.
In order to avoid this situation, University financial aid officers "take every case on its own and figure out what the family can afford to pay," Durkee said, adding that the University tends "to be more generous than most other schools" because it takes "trying to be fair" into consideration. "Being fair means taking into account a family's full circumstances — what kind of resources they have available to them and what kind of expenditures they have," Durkee said.
The University also remains the only school in the country that has eliminated loans from financial aid packages. If a student received two financial aid packages — one from the University that required parental contribution and one from Harvard that did not — the Princeton package could actually be more generous since it is loan-free, Durkee said.
On collegeconfidential.com, a website that provides information and discussion forums on college admissions, a recent thread focuses on Harvard's new financial aid program.
Though some posts suggest that Harvard has the most generous aid, one person gave Princeton credit for initiating the trend of increasing financial aid.
"Props to Princeton for initiating some of the first moves in the direction of highly selective colleges making CLEAR to low-income families that list price should be no reason not to apply and to enroll," tokenadult wrote. "Harvard is rising to the occasion by moving even more aggressively in that direction."
Durkee said that he thinks the University's financial aid program is still more generous than Harvard's, but added that what is more important "is that both of us are trying to make sure that there's extensive financial aid available and both of us are trying to make sure that students all around the country are aware that they can attend schools like Princeton, like Harvard."
For universities that have joined in the effort to increase financial aid to lowand middle-income families, the task is now to make the policies known to prospective students who might not otherwise apply. "The truth is that all of these schools have made very extensive commitments to financial aid and we want students to be applying to these schools, if these schools are right for them, knowing that financial aid is available," Durkee said.
The University's efforts to advertise the financial aid program have paid off, Durkee said. "We try very hard to make sure that potential applicants, parents, counselors and anyone else who may be talking with potential applicants ... know that Princeton has a very generous financial aid program, and if you look back over the last few years, we've seen a very significant increase in the percentage of our class that's on financial aid," Durkee said.
One risk that universities who advertise a specific cutoff have is that "students will assume that only students below that number will qualify for financial aid," Durkee explained.
Despite the overwhelming tendency by other institutions to advertise financial aid programs by income levels, the University will continue to operate as it has, Durkee said.
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