Make it Better, Make it Free

Three weeks ago an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times urged Harvard to adopt a shocking new proposal: make the College absolutely free. That’s right—no tuition, no room rent, and no board for all students. Despite the suggestion’s seemingly radical nature, we quantitatively can and qualitatively should pursue this policy.

Peter Hong, author of the op-ed, estimated the cost of making Harvard College “on the house” at about $280 million a year, an increase of $190 million in financial aid. That number represents less than a one percent increase in the endowment payout. Though critics have pointed out that most funds have restricted use, many living donors are likely to change their conditions if they consider the cause compelling. Even if this policy did not push people to donate more, which is highly unlikely, the costs in the first years would be covered by the current yearly flow of donations, around $300 million for FAS alone.

Given that a free Harvard is a financial possibility, the question we should be asking is not whether we can pursue this policy but whether we should. To answer the latter, we should look to socioeconomic impact and the potential for Harvard to change students’ lives.

The cliché that America is the land of opportunity and social mobility is slowly but steadily disappearing as social structures become calcified. Since the 1980s, income inequality has skyrocketed: income in the poorest household percentile grew by 6.4 percent, whereas the top one grew by over 70 percent. This occurred while social mobility declined: the Economic Policy Institute argues that there has been a 16 percent decrease in social mobility for the second-to-lowest quintile, and the prospects are even darker for the poorest one. Moreover, economist Earl Wysong found in a cross-generational study that nearly 70 percent of all sons in 1998 were doing equally or worse than their fathers twenty years before.

Education, the driving engine of class change, played a large role in this disturbing social disease. A 2004 Century Foundation study found that only three percent of America’s 146 most selective colleges come from the bottom socioeconomic quarter of the population. At any of those campuses, it is 25 times more likely that any given student’s family is rich than poor.

If Harvard were free, one could bet on significant change. Firstly, the 18 percent rise in applications after Summers’ introduction of the Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) two years ago proved many still saw Harvard education as inaccessible. Others consider the campus a snobbish dungeon. A free Harvard would remake Harvard’s public image, ensuring a truly universal applicant pool. Secondly, students could forget about their summer expected earnings or work-study requirements and could fully focus on their studies and extracurriculars. White-collar parents’ nightmares about college would diminish, if not cease. Such a transformation would catapult Harvard back to its vaunted position as a moral leader through fabulous media buzz.

And the effect of Harvard’s actions would touch more than the 1,675 students Harvard can take every year. Our rival institutions would be pressured to make their education more accessible or free, as Yale, Stanford, and others did with HFAI. Although not everyone can go to college, Harvard can lead a new commitment to progress and equality of opportunity by opening higher education to everyone, regardless of their parents’ checkbook.

The metamorphosis of Harvard’s image amongst the lower income brackets will far outweigh the adverse effects of giving a free ride to rich students. Alumni would have much better incentives to help Harvard, and rich parents would also have a greater incentive to donate to Harvard. More importantly, an implicit honor covenant would be established with every graduating class. If you received a free education, wouldn’t you feel like helping out once you get that Morgan Stanley job thanks to your Harvard diploma? The surge in alumni, parent, and graduate giving would offset a large portion of the program’s long-term cost, and this virtuous cycle could even fund free graduate education. Delta Airlines’ new slogan would be believable: “good goes around.”

In the spirit of commitment to avoid the creation of an American aristocracy demonstrated by President James B. Conant ’13, it is time for Harvard to lead a transformation of social mobility. Doing so would revolutionize education, boosting both academic excellence and our mission to favor equality of opportunities. That is a worthy prescription for America’s inequality disease, and Harvard is uniquely positioned to apply the treatment. Because we can, because we should, let’s make Harvard free.

Pierpaolo Barbieri ’09 lives in Thayer Hall.