Harvard change = Better NCAA/Ivy League fencing

[DenverFencing]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/ed...11harvard.html

I read this article in the NY Times yesterday and thought:

"If Harvard (and other Ivys/top schools) lower their prices (to middle up to fairly rich kids) would it reason that they might attract more higher level fencers away from the Penn State/Ohio State/Notre Dame and make them more competitive."

I went to UPenn and was happy to see them included in the article.

I also heard from a couple of sources that Duke, which was mention in the article was getting a top flight fencer for next season. Hmmm...

Nathan
www.denverfencingcenter.com

[AndrewH]

People, please stop with posting links to sites that require registration. If there's no other source, copy/paste the text.

[keith]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

People, please stop with posting links to sites that require registration. If there's no other source, copy/paste the text.

People, please stop moaning about copyright holders asking for something in return for their content.

[wahrman]

At least in the cases of Harvard and Notre Dame I don't think cost is the
driving factor for a fencer choosing ND over Harvard.

According to their respective websites, Harvard already costs nearly $4000
less per year for undergrad tuition than does Notre Dame.

EDIT: Harvard break down their fees differently than does ND. They turn
out to be nearly identical in tuition + fees. But still, that can't the deal
breaker.

Originally Posted by DenverFencing

"If Harvard (and other Ivys/top schools) lower their prices (to middle up to fairly rich kids) would it reason that they might attract more higher level fencers away from the Penn State/Ohio State/Notre Dame and make them more competitive."

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by wahrman

At least in the cases of Harvard and Notre Dame I don't think cost is the
driving factor for a fencer choosing ND over Harvard.

According to their respective websites, Harvard already costs nearly $4000
less per year for undergrad tuition than does Notre Dame.

In theory it could. ND is allowed to give athletics aid, while Harvard is not.

That said, I agree with you.

-B

[wahrman]

Good point. But I have to wonder how much that aid could amount to?

If it's 35k per year, that's a big incentive. If it's 5k, not so much.

Everyone is different but I'd certainly rather be at Harvard if possible.

Originally Posted by oiuyt

In theory it could. ND is allowed to give athletics aid, while Harvard is not.

That said, I agree with you.

-B

[bigdawg2121]

Originally Posted by keith

People, please stop moaning about copyright holders asking for something in return for their content.

That's not what he's moaning about at all. His gripe is that the article is being referenced (with a link) on an internet forum. If you can't read the referenced article then referencing it is kind of useless. Hence, if you feel the need to reference protected content (especially when it just wants readers to register so that they can have their email boxes spammed) just give us an idea of what's going on in the article. That's reasonable especially if you expect a useful conversation from the referenced content to arise. Expecting us to register for random crap isn't.


*that being said I don't think I read far enough down to notice that I was supposed to register so I'm not sure how much it mattered this time around.

[KD5MDK]

bugmenot.com people.

[samster]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

In theory it could. ND is allowed to give athletics aid, while Harvard is not.

But Harvard does have a good aid packages available along other individual parameters.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by wahrman

Good point. But I have to wonder how much that aid could amount to?

If it's 35k per year, that's a big incentive. If it's 5k, not so much.

Fencing teams have a certain number of scholarship equivalents to offer. They can be full grant-in-aid* packages or they can be split up among a greater number of athletes receiving partial aid.

For Division I fencing there are 4.5 scholarships maximum for men's teams and 5 for women's. I'm not sure what the limits are for Division II, and, of course, Division III is not allowed to give any.

Some schools give a lot of money to a few top-tier fencers, others spread the money around a bit more. And, of course, some schools don't have a full allocation.

I strongly suspect ND has the full allocation, although I have no information about how they distribute it. Harvard is bound by Ivy League rules, so is not permitted to give any athletics aid, despite being a Division I school.

-B

* a full grant-in-aid consists of tuition, fees, room and board, and required course-related books.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by samster

But Harvard does have a good aid packages available along other individual parameters.

Indeed. Such a program is the main focus of the linked article.

-B

[DenverFencing]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22186316/

AP/MSNBC version to get the thread on track...

[DenverFencing]

So Notre Dame case, that's potentially 9.5 fencers out of 12 recruited to qualify to the NCAA Championship. Or if they spread it right their athletic aid and keep their recruits fencing, 10-12 out of 12 fencers.

Now Harvard and others have lowered the average price (plus no loans) for their fencing team. So they may be able to get more quality fencers and make their win of the NCAA championships a couple of years ago more regular. That was my thinking after reading the article....

Nathan
www.denverfencingcenter.com

[KD5MDK]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

* a full grant-in-aid consists of tuition, fees, room and board, and required course-related books.

If a particular computer* was required by a course of study, would that qualify?
I know (in the program I'm thinking of) they're considered the same as course required books fro financial aid purposes in general, but perhaps not for NCAA.

* as in, this exact model is specified by the department or equivalent.

[oiuyt]

I'd have to ask my compliance officer to find out for sure.

I know other course supplies (specifically I'm thinking supplies for art classes) that are listed on the syllabus are eligible. I don't know what, if any, limits the NCAA puts on such.

-B

[JMcC]

Originally Posted by DenverFencing

"If Harvard (and other Ivys/top schools) lower their prices (to middle up to fairly rich kids) would it reason that they might attract more higher level fencers away from the Penn State/Ohio State/Notre Dame and make them more competitive."

I went to UPenn and was happy to see them included in the article.

I also heard from a couple of sources that Duke, which was mention in the article was getting a top flight fencer for next season. Hmmm...

Nathan

For it to make a difference, you'd have to assume that the fencer at Penn State/Ohio State/Notre Dame would have been admitted to Harvard (with the grades, test scores etc.), and the only reason they didn't was because they could not afford Harvard.

There will most likely only be a few that may fall into that category.

Harvard is one of, if not the most difficult colleges to be accepted at (Penn's up there too).

[Tomas N]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

People, please stop with posting links to sites that require registration. If there's no other source, copy/paste the text.

Registration is free.

I'm not sure how much this is going to change fencing at the Ivy's. If your parents pull in $150,000 a year, in most cases they can afford to pay for Harvard with the current aid packages. As JMcC points out, the trick is getting into Harvard in the first place.

I'm not sure that JMcC wanted to imply this, but I Harvard doesn't turn down qualified candidates because they aren't able to pay.

Tomas

[epeemike81]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

People, please stop with posting links to sites that require registration. If there's no other source, copy/paste the text.

dude, it's a free registration, just fill it out.

-m

[Zilverzmurfen]

Originally Posted by epeemike81

dude, it's a free registration, just fill it out.

Even if the registration is free I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to register.

Anyway, I could access the article without any problems. Here it is:

Originally Posted by nytimes.com

Harvard to Aid Students High in Middle Class
By SARA RIMER and ALAN FINDER
Published: December 11, 2007

BOSTON, Dec. 10 — Harvard University announced on Monday that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offered to middle-class and upper-middle-class students, seeking to allay concerns that elite colleges are becoming too expensive for even relatively well-off families.
The move, to go into effect in the next school year, appears to make Harvard’s aid to students with household incomes from $120,000 to $180,000 the most generous of any of the country’s prestigious private universities. Harvard will generally charge such students 10 percent of their family household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $45,600.
Officials said the policy would cut costs by a third to 50 percent for many students and make the real costs of attending Harvard comparable to those at major state universities.
They said the initiative would increase financial aid spending by the university to $120 million annually from $98 million. A little more than half of Harvard undergraduates get some form of aid, including many from families earning $120,000 or more.
The new aid policy is part of a broader effort by elite universities to ease the financial burden of rising tuition and ward off the perception that they have become unaffordable. Amherst, Williams, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton are among those that have increased aid and substituted grants for loans to some students in recent years.
The move also comes as members of Congress, concerned that tuition has outpaced inflation, have been discussing whether universities should be required to spend a minimum amount of what their endowments earn on student aid. Harvard has a $35 billion endowment, the highest of any university.
Harvard officials said they had been considering the aid change for some time.
“We’ve all been aware of increasing pressures on the middle class,” said Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust. “We hear about this in a number of ways — housing costs, both parents working, the difficulty of amassing any kinds of savings, just the increasing pressures as middle class lives have become more stressed.”
Three years ago, under Lawrence H. Summers, the president at the time, Harvard decided that families whose income was less than $40,000 would no longer have to pay for undergraduate education, although students would still have to make some contribution though programs like work-study. It then raised the income level eligible for the waiver to $60,000.
Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid, William R. Fitzsimmons, said those changes had increased the number of low-income students by 33 percent in three years. But Harvard officials said they had become increasingly concerned about higher-income families.
Many Harvard officials, Dr. Faust said, feared that cost was driving the choices students made about graduate school and careers and that it had created what amounted to a two-class system among Harvard undergraduates. Mr. Fitzsimmons referred to it as “the upstairs downstairs syndrome.”
The officials said, for example, that often only the wealthy students can afford to pursue highly valuable but unpaid research opportunities with professors, take unpaid summer internships, study abroad or even spend time with their friends.
Under the new financial aid rules, the university said, a family making $120,000 would have to pay about $12,000 for a child to attend Harvard College, compared with more than $19,000 under current policies. A family making $180,000 would pay $18,000, down from $30,000.
The university also plans to substitute grants for loans in all financial-aid packages and will no longer consider home equity in calculating aid. The change in home equity considerations alone will mean, on average, a reduction of $4,000 a year in cost for those families whose home equity would previously have been a part of the financial aid calculation.
Harvard officials say they do not want families borrowing against their homes — or selling their homes — in order to send their children to the university. “If you had an oil well in the backyard, you could sell the oil,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “But you need to live somewhere.”
Currently, 763 students whose family incomes are between $120,000 and $180,000 receive some financial aid from Harvard, which has a total of 6,600 undergraduates. The new policy will apply to them next year, officials said.
Only a handful of universities have anything even remotely close to Harvard’s financial resources, and it was not clear how many could afford to follow. Yale tersely said in response only that it was planning an announcement next month on expanded financial aid.
Still, some university officials said they thought Harvard would have followers.
“They are the first; they’re not going to be the last,” said Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment at Dickinson College. “My concern is that we are squeezing middle- and upper-income students out of the picture.”
While Yale, Princeton and Stanford all give aid to students from middle- to upper-middle-class families, Harvard’s initiative goes much further.
Richard Kahlenberg, who is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a nonprofit public policy group and has written extensively about income inequality and higher education, called Harvard’s new initiative “a very positive step.”
“The bottom line is that you want the best and the brightest from all economic backgrounds to apply to a place like Harvard,” Mr. Kahlenberg said. “And to the extent that Harvard can send a message that ‘we will make it work for you,’ that’s important as a political matter. It’s important to take care of the middle class because you don’t want a backlash against programs for low-income students.”
While tuition and other college costs have soared over the last decade, many highly selective private universities have been taking actions to help students from low-income and working-class families.
Princeton was among the first universities to alter its financial aid formulas to help low-income and middle-income students. In 2001, Princeton made the shift to grants from loans for all students receiving financial aid. It also removed a family’s home equity from the calculations, said Robin Moscato, Princeton’s director of financial aid.
“We share Harvard’s concern about the pressures on middle-income families,” she said.
Just last Saturday, Duke University announced several changes intended to make the college more affordable. It said it would eliminate parental contributions for families making less than $60,000 and give students from families making less than $40,000 grants so they could graduate without loans to repay.
Yale, Pennsylvania, Columbia and other Ivy League universities have also increased the overall amount of aid they dispense and expanded eligibility. Beginning this semester, Columbia is substituting grants for loans for students from households with incomes below $50,000.
Both Williams and Amherst announced recently that they would substitute grants for loans as part of their financial-aid packages to reduce debt. And Stanford added $5 million in financial aid this school year for students with family incomes between $60,000 and $135,000.
Dr. Faust said Harvard’s decision to go further was meant to ensure that all income groups had access to higher education. “Education is the engine that makes American democracy work,” she said. “And it has to work, and that means people have to have access.”
She added, “At the heart of this is a commitment to redefining the terms of access.”