I never heard of the SUNY’s til College Confidential, and if it weren’t for College Confidential I still wouldn’t have ever heard of them.
^ Ditto for NIU, UIUC, etc 
But I’m FROM NY, so of course knew the SUNYs.
I had no idea there were so many. I did know there are (or seem to be) a gazillion colleges in PA (grew up there, too.) Some get lots of attention from the NE kids some insist wouldn’t deign to apply .
@fewaypark,
Actually, Harvard, like most universities, has lots of unrestricted money in the endowment. About 30% of Harvard’s endowment is currently unrestricted. Of course much of that goes toward unsexy costs like maintenance or administration. Of restricted funds, the two largest categories are student and faculty support.
An interesting challenge is matching older restricted funds to current needs. The university can stretch somewhat, particularly if the school cannot possible use to the fund in the way it was intended, for instance, a maintenance fund for a building that has been demolished, but they cannot totally subvert the will of the donor simply because it doesn’t match the school’s priorities. When I worked at Harvard, one of my jobs was to match grad students to funding sources. Restricted funds were the bane of my existence when it came time to apportion FA. We had one in particular which had a decent income but was written to supply support to a student studying a field no longer actively being researched. Interestingly, restricted funds could in rare cases affect admissions in that we would sometimes admit a kid who would qualify for a fund we couldn’t use on anyone else. It wasn’t a major factor but it could be a minor tip.
I’m not particularly eager to tell Harvard what to do with its money either. I think the BOT is smart enough to figure out how to spend the university’s funds. I was just responding to the idea that the best way to spend excess endowment would be to give all undergraduates a free ride.
@Sue22 I have seen similar issues in other foundations -smaller than Harvard. Funds set up forty years ago for things no longer relevant. Makes you wonder how many millions or more is tied up across the country that could be utilized but just grow into perpetuity.
^^^The college can petition the heirs, or the courts, to change the restriction if it is “irrelevant”. For example, if the money was to go for scholarships to the children of Korean War veterans, it could be changed to the children of all veterans.
Many of us in this forum are aware that the service academies have a no-cost policy, but would never seriously consider them. Many of us also are well aware that schools like Prairie View A&M offer automatic full-ride scholarships to kids with stats above a certain threshold, but would never seriously consider them. These options may as well be in another world to many folks on CC. To a certain extent, the same may be true for schools like Harvard to many good students in distant rural areas, lower SES levels, or very conservative families. They may be aware of the Harvard brand … but just don’t care about it, period.
If it really can’t be used as specified by the donor it can usually be repurposed, for instance using a phrenology fund for neurology or psychology. Unfortunately sometimes the funds are restricted to uses the college or university wouldn’t choose to support, but are still technically usable. The lengths I had to go to use some funds made me more prone to making unrestricted donations.
Donors like to be able to visualize how their gift will be used but sometimes placing restrictions on the donation makes it less useful to the institution.
(Cross-posted with TomSrOfBoston!)
@lookingforward: Regarding an upthread comment on renting books: the online rental costs offer no real advantage over the used-book costs at all. Don’t know about the campus rentals, though.
This thread presupposes that if H gave free tuition to all students that it would pick a distribution of students. I think that’s an erroneous assumption.
Maybe we should end the income tax exemption for non-profits. Colleges, churches etc. can all pay taxes. Those taxes can fund college for low income kids!
That should get everyone riled up. Lol
There’s a key omitted word in my post #189. It should have read:
This thread presupposes that if H gave free tuition to all students that it would pick a different distribution of students than it presently does. I think that’s an erroneous assumption.
Good point - the assumption seems to be that it would “open the doors” to poorer students (any more than it is).
There’s this notion that certain groups (racial and geographic mainly) are underrepresented in elite colleges including Harvard, and that Harvard is actively trying to reach out to these underrepresented groups to increase their share of enrollment. IMHO, making Harvard free will help that cause. Just think despite its excellent FA program, how many out there think Harvard is “very expensive”? Some of the posters mentioned Union College as a proof that tuition free wouldn’t increase awareness, but Harvard is very different from Union in many ways, and its going free would be WIDELY publicized. Then some posters also say it’s not because of the cost but because of the “cultural biases”. If that’s the case, I guess the more “enlightened” in the underrepresented groups may be the ones who are at a higher income level but are not “Harvard rich” even with the need-based FA. Harvard going free will encourage them to apply. How many times do we say “oh that’s a nice thing, but I wouldn’t/couldn’t spend that much for it. If only it was cheaper…”. For the above mentioned good, I wouldn’t care if it would also benefit the “hedge fund managers”. Harvard tuition is “pocket money” to them anyway. Taking it or leaving it would have minimal impact to them. Don’t forget though that the majority of the full paying families are still working professionals who need to make sacrifices to pay the full freight. It’s a choice of course and they “can afford it”, but not without pain. I don’t see anything wrong for Harvard to give a break to them as well.
If the rural kids in Oklahoma don’t know that H is free to them now, H being free to everybody isn’t going to change that. I think you’re not really getting how little these schools are thought about outside upper middle class affluent areas (and certain new immigrant groups).
@Pizzagirl Is Harvard doomed in this respect? There’s absolutely nothing they could do to change the perceptions of those who are not already into Harvard?
To add on to a comment I made earlier - while a high percentage of H students are on FA, those who are on partial aid (as little as a few thousand) and those who received even a small amount of outside scholarships are counted in that percentage too. There are more people who are paying but are not super rich. And we are talking about Harvard whose endowment has grown so large that it’s getting the bad kind of attention. I see many benefits of H going free, even to H itself.
A colleague and I just talked about the issue not long long: A student from a “disadvantaged” family background tends to not attend an elite college or even a flagship college. His immediate reaction to this is: This is by and large the same everywhere in the world; it is not only in this country that we have this phenomenon.
Wait…I heard of a story about a different phenomenon from the Internet a decade ago: Some family in an East Asian country, even a relatively poor family, has a lot of pressure to send their kid to an elite college in the East Asia countries when their kid gets into a college perceived as a very good college. If a kid in a small town got into such a college and his parents refused to pay (including even selling out their property to come up with the money), the parents would be despised by the majority of families in that town. The repercussion to the parents for not supporting their kid to attend such a college (if he/she has got in) could be very significant; it is almost like the parents being perceived by many as lacking the “characters” and other people in the town would hesitate to “deal with” such people anymore.
It was a decade ago when I read about it though. If it was true, people there just have a totally different mentality about the importance of receiving education at a college which is perceived as prestigious in that part of the world.
@mcat2: That doesn’t seem to be happening in Harvard, judging by the debt level (almost non) their graduates. But my point is that Harvard tuition even partial tuition is far from being pocket money to the majority of families that are not super rich. If Harvard can and is willing to help, why are we against it?
@panpacific,
I am not against the idea that H gives more financial breaks to families. If it is totally free to everyone, I am not totally against it either. (even though it is arguable speaking not very fair to do so, whatever could help the middle class families is good in my book – even when the rich kids also get free rides they may not be justifiably entitled to.)
Another benefit of doing this is that H (and similar ones) may have less incentives of recruiting a certain percentage of their students from rich families. (Is it about 40-50% now? If this is true, I think it is justified to lower that percentage. The rich kids should have their “fair” share of percentage; but the percentage should not be “too high.”)