Abstract:

Harvard University, with the largest educational endowment in the world at approximately forty billion dollars, is concerned about financial stability. President Lawrence Bacow and other Harvard administrators cite two facets of higher education that may contribute to future instability: negative returns to the university endowment due to adverse market conditions and the cost of education gap, defined as the difference between the actual cost of a Harvard education (over $100,000) and the average net cost of attendance after financial aid (approximately $35,000). Nevertheless, reversing the current trend and repositioning the university to ensure financially solvent times in the future is a difficult, yet necessary task. Not only will it require concentrated and coordinated efforts to identify financial weaknesses across the institutional system, but it will require administrators to make difficult choices and changes to the very fabrics of higher education around the world. However, before reshaping the university’s central functions or financial position, it is important to consider the potential effects of such changes on students and their higher education experience. This study does this through surveys and interviews which gauge student preferences and provide insight into which Harvard College programs students would rather see cuts to in dire times. The paper also ends with a challenge to the traditional solution binary–either raise tuition or cut student programs–by garnering student feedback on alternative program structures that simultaneously allows students to affect their own environments and reduce the cost of education gap.