Harvard Offers Free Tuition to More Middle Class Families

March 24th, 2025

Azzy Xiang

Alan M. Garber, president of Harvard University, announced that Harvard will now be free for students with annual incomes of less than $100,000, in addition to receiving grants during their time at Harvard. Specifically, the expansion includes a two-part startup grant for undergraduates to help with the transition to life after they graduate. This allows 86% of US families to qualify for financial aid, and widens the diversity of backgrounds and experiences on the campus. This absolves many prospecting students' fears about high costs, as tuition and boarding cost total to $83,000 per year. However, Harvard has frozen hiring due to uncertainty under the Trump administration and the president's threats to reduce funding to colleges allowing for certain types of protests.

In addition, Harvard expanded financial aid to make tuition free for families making up to $200,000, even granting significant aid to those above this income threshold depending on specific circumstances. This reflects similar policies enacted by MIT which increased the tuition-free cutoff from $140,000 to $200,000 per year, and University of Texas, which introduced a mandatory fee waiver for families with incomes of less than $100,000. The University of Massachusetts has also taken initiative to help students not already in the 92% of qualified candidates receiving financial aid.

Experts claim these colleges' actions are part of an "affordability arms race," as competition between the institutions increases and funding becomes more uncertain. Duke, Princeton, Yale, and Northwestern University introduced "no-loan" policies only a few months before this major financial aid expansion, meaning that they eliminated student loans from financial aid packages. However, some who study higher education contend that these major changes will have negligible impact for many students because less than 1% of them enroll at an Ivy League school to begin with. Yet, more than 100 universities have already adopted similar practices too, small schools and major institutions alike.