HARVARD 'S TUITION ANNOUNCEMENT

Harvard is offering free tuition for students that have a family
income below $40,000. If you are a mentor or have nieces and nephews
who might be interested, please give them this information. If you
know anyone/family earning less than $40K with a brilliant child near
ready for college, please pass this along.

Harvard's Tuition Announcement Highlights Failure of Prestigious Universities to Enroll
Low-Income Students March 1, 2004, Harvard University announced over the
weekend that from now on undergraduate students from low-income families
will pay no tuition. In making the announcement, Harvard's president
Lawrence H. Summers said, "When only 10 percent of the students in Elite
higher education come from families in lower half the income distribution,
we are not doing enough. We are not doing enough in bringing elite higher
education to the lower half of the income distribution." If you know of a family earning less than $40,000 a year with an honor student graduating from high school soon, Harvard University wants to pay the tuition. The prestigious university recently announced that from now on undergraduate students from low-income families can go to Harvard for
free...no tuition and no student loans! To find out more about Harvard
offering free tuition for families making less than $40,000 a year visit
Harvard's financial aid web site at:
http://adm-is.fas.harvard.edu/FAO/index.htm
or call the school's financial aid office at (617) 495- 1581.

This initiative puts severe pressure on other well-endowed colleges
and universities to adopt similar measures. Some commentators believe
that Harvard's announcement was made in response to Princeton
University's decision six years ago to eliminate all tuition
charges for families earning less than $40,000 (adjusted annually
to take inflation into account) and its subsequent decision three years
later to substitute all student loans with outright grants. The Harvard announcement indicates that the Princeton plan has had some success in drawing to Princeton some of the high-achieving, low-income students who typically went to Harvard each year.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education gathers figures from the U.S. Department of Education relating to the percentage of students at the nation's leading colleges and universities who receive federal financial assistance under the Pell Grant program for
low-income students. These figures provide a good measure of the institution's Relative success in enrolling students from the bottom economic sector of the nation' s families.

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