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Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

So, here's the crazy thing. Back-of-the-envelope, but it gives a picture. Harvard has 20,000 students, give or take. Plucking a number from the air, let's say that one year of study is $50,000. Across 20,000 students, that's $1B in tuition fees. Harvard's endownment is $36B.

For less than 3% of their endowment, they could give 'free education'. Obviously the whole picture is a little more complex, but it does add some context around funding.

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I can't speak for Harvard, but MIT for example insures that all students who come from families making < 75K attend tuition free.

http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html

I think on a few levels, MIT is not the source of problems in the US university system.

People do not tend to graduate MIT in deep debt and without job prospects.

Harvard and Princeton both offer no-loan financial aid.

http://admission.princeton.edu/financialaid

Interesting. I imagine there's some devil in the details, but taking it on faith, 60% of the students there get no debt. Thanks for the info.

As a student at Princeton, I know I'd never have been able to attend if it were not for their extremely generous financial aid. Princeton's aid package lowered the total cost to well below the other schools I applied to (mostly New Jersey state schools).

Harvard (and most of its peer institutions) give ~free education to anyone who can get in and comes from the ~middle class.

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