Opinion: Will Yale and Harvard Endowment Decisions Do More Harm Than Good?

The editors of USA Today have opened up a debate on the significance of Yale and Harvard Universities’ recent decision to spend more from their endowments each year to make tuition affordable for a broader income range of students. In the piece, Our View on College Affordability: Boola-Boola for Yale, the editors praise both schools for “addressing the sticker stock that discourages applications from brilliant students who lack trust funds,” but say that the move does little to respond to important underlying issues, such as college affordability for the “99.92 percent of four-year students in the U.S.A. who attend institutions other than Harvard and Yale.”

The editors write that since, according to the College Board, the cost of tuition is outstripping inflation at both public and private universities, the United States is at risk of preventing the type of workforce “necessary to compete in the global economy” from receiving a college education.

They suggest that the federal government increase tuition tax credits, as well as the value of grants, to send low-income students to college while schools search for ways to collaborate with one another to cut costs. They also say making parents and students “more informed consumers” would increase competition and help people determine “whether a selective private college is any better than a nearby, more affordable state school.”

However, in William G. Durden and Robert J. Massa’s response — Opposing View: Elite Schools Drive Costs — the authors say that Harvard’s and Yale’s recent decision will only serve to raise the tuition price for schools without comparable endowments and will “reduce access for low- and middle-income students” at those institutions.

“The elimination of loans by wealthy schools will increase the tuition price students pay ‘systemwide,’ not decrease it,” they write. Although they contend that upper-middle-income families are often asked to pay “more than they can afford,” the authors suggest that Harvard and Yale should not “act unilaterally to ‘fix’ this problem.” Such universities “should be leading a national discussion on reforming the way parent contributions are determined,” they wrote.