

The 'Veritas' About Harvard - yarapavan
http://chronicle.com/article/Think-Tank-The-Veritas/48590/

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chasingsparks
Vanity fair had a (IMO) much better article on Harvard's endowment drop at
[http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard2...](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard200908)

Also, from the Vanity Fair article note: _Officially, the university charges
$48,868 a year for undergraduate tuition, room, and board that’s an increase
of 50 percent over the last 10 years but only a small number of students
actually pays that much. Back in 2004, under growing pressure from Washington,
and in response to outsiders who accused the school of (a) elitism and (b)
hoarding its immense wealth, Larry Summers shook up the world of higher
education by announcing that students whose parents earned $40,000 a year or
less would be able to attend Harvard gratis. Two years later, that cutoff was
increased to $60,000, a figure well above the median U.S. household income.

Still, Harvard pressed ahead in its efforts to ease the growing burden of
tuition. In December 2007, declaring that excellence and opportunity must go
hand in hand, the university’s new president, Drew Faust, made another
stunning announcement: henceforth, students whose parents earn as much as
$180,000 a year would pay no more than 10 percent of their family’s annual
income in tuition fees._

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jdminhbg
Some interesting points, but this one:

"In 1990 the university welcomed slightly more than 1,600 students to its
freshman class. In 2008, $32-billion later, it enrolled slightly more than
1,600 freshmen.

That is remarkable stinginess. Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely
valuable, conferring a lifetime of social capital and prestige."

Isn't the reason Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely valuable
precisely the limited supply of them?

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maudineormsby
Maybe, but shouldn't they be valuable because it's graduates have proven
themselves to be well educated and well balanced people? Should education be
valuable because there is so little of it?

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arihelgason
The question is how well does quality education scale?

What I found most valuable during my university days was easy access to great
professors. Many of my peers learned more outside the classroom in this way
than during lectures.

With more students it becomes difficult to foster this type of one to one
relationship. Those less motivated to get to know professors become more
likely to fall by the wayside.

~~~
maudineormsby
True but I think the article's point was that you could maintain the same
professor-student ratio and increase class sizes if you have the billlions
that Harvard had. Instead they spent the money to make them seem more
prestigious.

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req2
You could maintain the same professor-student ratio, but you wouldn't be able
to retain the same professors. If Harvard expanded, it would be less able to
maintain the 'superstar professor'-professor ratio because other colleges
would be able to court the professors away with offers of greater access to
better facilities and bigger corner offices with better grad student support.

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wooster
This is the same guy who thinks online education will replace traditional
colleges:

[http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?do...](http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=1015721)

Here's his ideal fantasy university -- funded by Bill Gates, with unlimited
online enrollment:

[http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?do...](http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=963317)

Given that, more online education is likely his real message here: "Harvard
can just expand online! Admit everyone who wants to go! It'll be great!"

I've done online education, correspondence courses, and live satellite
courses. They don't compare in any way to college courses, let alone the
college experience.

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kakooljay
Love this: In early September, endowment officials announced that they had
lost $10-billon, a 27-percent drop... Vanity Fair sent a reporter to Cambridge
this year to assess the damage. She was told that the university had lowered
thermostats by four degrees and would no longer be serving free coffee
[because their endowment was "only" ~30 billion].

Btw, endowment or no endowment, Harvard is not in business to give away free
degrees. Indeed 10 to 15 percent of students in any given class at Harvard are
legacies, who pay a LOT for a Harvard undergrad degree, which, by the way,
isn't worth as much as people think.. <http://slate.com/id/2112215/>

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dschobel
That article hinges entirely on defining success as reaching a c-level
position at a fortune 100.

The diminishing presence of ivy leaguers could just as well indicate a shift
in priorities by the kids or the fact that the _really_ big money was in
private hedge-funds for the better part of the last decade.

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ryanwaggoner
Did you read the article? That's precisely what it posits in the last couple
of paragraphs.

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dschobel
You're absolutely right, I made a mistake. You were the one equating worth
with a c-level position (which is unsubstantiated by the article) not the
author.

My apologies for the confusion.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
You've made another mistake: I wasn't the one who made the comment you
responded to.

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dschobel
So your role in all this is to defend his erroneous point?

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comatose51
Funny how the author completely ignored a similar college in a similar
situation. Yale is building two new residential colleges to add to its current
twelve. Construction is underway already. Saying that elite universities
purposely limit the number of students admitted is baseless. It's not as easy
to expand as one might think. Furthermore, many of these universities do
graduate level research that can be world changing. That's also another part
of an university's mission, which the author also ignored. This is quite
ironic given all the Nobels being handed out right now.

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ivankirigin
My brother in law just finished Harvard. He got excellent financial aid, as
did most in his class. Why should not accepting more people equal stinginess?
They have, yah know, standards...

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elblanco
Then they should simply lower the tuition cost and avoid the aid hassle.

They could still just select the top 1600 students a year (or whatever the
figure is)...but that would dramatically change the makeup of those 1600.

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ivankirigin
I highly doubt anyone in that group of 1600 accepted doesn't go to Harvard out
of need. Anyone have stats on this?

