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.
"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?
Perhaps, but I think there is a much more practical and likely reason. It's just one that won't sell magazine articles: Harvard exists in a finite amount of space.
Anyone who lives in Cambridge knows that Harvard, like many other city-schools, has expanded to the absolute borders of its property lines. It literally has nowhere else to go, which is why it is now buying property across the Charles river in Boston across from HBS.
While it is always fun to criticize "elite schools" for their snobbery, I would suggest that the administration of Harvard actually had a rather simple decision: keep harvard at the scale and size that has proven successful for decades upon decades, or build a satellite campus to hold new students so it can grow it's size. A dimension of a university that is hard to put a dollar amount on is community. While building a satellite campus in Boston is possible, I think this would seriously damage the community, and thus output, of the school by dividing it into two disjoint locations.
Anyway.. I just think it's easy to get mad at a school like Harvard for not accepting more students. But in reality, they simply are a school built a long time ago for a certain amount of students and can't realistically grow much larger.
Isn't the reason Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely valuable precisely the limited supply of them?
Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely valuable because Harvard does not have to maintain the polite fiction that all individuals are equally gifted. As a result, other institutions which have to maintain the polite fiction that all individuals are equally gifted, but which would prefer to get the ones more gifted than others, look for the Harvard label.
Yeah, it's kind of like saying "De Beers has so much money, why don't they use it to mine more diamonds so everyone can wear some." It is the scarcity that makes them valuable.
Despite having gotten a lot out of Harvard, I have not been whipping out my checkbook when they ask for alumni contributions, because it's hard to see how even an extra billion would make any students' lives better.
I guess but at the same time the article points out that due to some lesser qualified students getting entry because of ivy school reason, many very qualified students get left out.
And frankly, Harvard's rep would increase if they had more students achieve success. A larger class size could aid in that.
If a Harvard education was useless -- and Harvard alums to a one all room-temperature iq, slackjawed mouthbreathers -- it wouldn't matter how scarce the degrees are, as they'd be valueless.
Once you assume a particular level of educational quality and/or other 'intrinsic' value (here 'intrinsic' == everything other than the pure scarcity premium) it is of course the case that ceteris paribus the degree becomes less valuable the more people have it.
But even then not entirely: if you cut the class size too small the consequent diminishment of the alumni network might take away more than the increased scarcity gave.
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?
The value is a function of the scarcity of the degree, the quality of the professors and the amount of resources.
Since the last variable has gone up with no decrease in the scarcity there's more value for fewer people, proportionally, than there was a decade ago.
The author argues this just further raises the walls surrounding an already fortunate class (because, let's be honest, if you get into Harvard, you're either talented as hell or extraordinarily well-connected).
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.
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/
They pay as much as anybody going to a private school. Many state schools charge just as much for an out of stater. If you are gonna spend that much money, you might as well go to a great school if you can.
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.
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.
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...
Because Harvard has the potential to expand out and encompass even more students while maintaining its level of quality. Unless you think no student rejected from Harvard is as valuable as the few it maintains?
[+] [-] chasingsparks|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jdminhbg|16 years ago|reply
"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?
[+] [-] eob|16 years ago|reply
Anyone who lives in Cambridge knows that Harvard, like many other city-schools, has expanded to the absolute borders of its property lines. It literally has nowhere else to go, which is why it is now buying property across the Charles river in Boston across from HBS.
While it is always fun to criticize "elite schools" for their snobbery, I would suggest that the administration of Harvard actually had a rather simple decision: keep harvard at the scale and size that has proven successful for decades upon decades, or build a satellite campus to hold new students so it can grow it's size. A dimension of a university that is hard to put a dollar amount on is community. While building a satellite campus in Boston is possible, I think this would seriously damage the community, and thus output, of the school by dividing it into two disjoint locations.
Anyway.. I just think it's easy to get mad at a school like Harvard for not accepting more students. But in reality, they simply are a school built a long time ago for a certain amount of students and can't realistically grow much larger.
[+] [-] patio11|16 years ago|reply
Harvard undergraduate degrees are immensely valuable because Harvard does not have to maintain the polite fiction that all individuals are equally gifted. As a result, other institutions which have to maintain the polite fiction that all individuals are equally gifted, but which would prefer to get the ones more gifted than others, look for the Harvard label.
[+] [-] algorias|16 years ago|reply
The more the degree is worth by itself, the more restricting it increases its value. There's a balance point somewhere in the middle.
[+] [-] tlb|16 years ago|reply
Despite having gotten a lot out of Harvard, I have not been whipping out my checkbook when they ask for alumni contributions, because it's hard to see how even an extra billion would make any students' lives better.
[+] [-] nkassis|16 years ago|reply
And frankly, Harvard's rep would increase if they had more students achieve success. A larger class size could aid in that.
[+] [-] frig|16 years ago|reply
If a Harvard education was useless -- and Harvard alums to a one all room-temperature iq, slackjawed mouthbreathers -- it wouldn't matter how scarce the degrees are, as they'd be valueless.
Once you assume a particular level of educational quality and/or other 'intrinsic' value (here 'intrinsic' == everything other than the pure scarcity premium) it is of course the case that ceteris paribus the degree becomes less valuable the more people have it.
But even then not entirely: if you cut the class size too small the consequent diminishment of the alumni network might take away more than the increased scarcity gave.
[+] [-] maudineormsby|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dschobel|16 years ago|reply
Since the last variable has gone up with no decrease in the scarcity there's more value for fewer people, proportionally, than there was a decade ago.
The author argues this just further raises the walls surrounding an already fortunate class (because, let's be honest, if you get into Harvard, you're either talented as hell or extraordinarily well-connected).
[+] [-] wooster|16 years ago|reply
http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?do...
Here's his ideal fantasy university -- funded by Bill Gates, with unlimited online enrollment:
http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?do...
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.
[+] [-] kakooljay|16 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] maximilian|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dschobel|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] comatose51|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivankirigin|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elblanco|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply