Harvard Says Poor Parents Won't Have to Pay
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Aiming to get more low-income students to enroll, Harvard will stop asking parents who earn less than $40,000 to make any contribution toward the cost of their children's education. Harvard will also reduce the amount it seeks from parents with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000.

"When only 10 percent of the students in elite higher education come from families in the lower half of the income distribution, we are not doing enough," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard, who will announce the financial aid changes at a meeting of the American Council on Education in Miami Beach today.

Dr. Summers said that higher education, rather than being an engine of social mobility, may be inhibiting it because of the wide gap in college attendance for students from different income classes.

Harvard officials said they believed theirs would be the first selective college to remove the parental contribution for low-income students, though some colleges do this unofficially to attract students they want.

At Harvard, the idea of eliminating the parental contribution grew out of focus groups with lower-income students last fall. University officials found that many of the students were paying some or all of their parents' share themselves.

Peter M. Brown, a junior from Oklahoma who participated in the focus groups, said that was true for him. One of seven children whose father died in 1991 and whose mother works as a schoolteacher, he said he did not show his mother the bill for the parental contribution. Last year it was nearly $3,000.

Only 7 percent of Harvard undergraduates are from families with earnings in the lowest quarter of American household incomes, and 16 percent are from the bottom half. Nearly three-quarters are from families with earnings in the top quarter.

Dr. Summers said that the numbers at most other selective private colleges were similar.

Harvard's tuition this year is $26,066. With room, board, books and other expenses, the total can reach $44,000. Harvard provides about $80 million in scholarship aid.

Parents who earn less than $40,000 are now asked to contribute an average of $2,300. That figure will drop to zero under the new plan, which begins in the fall. Parents with incomes of $40,000 to $60,000 will have their contributions cut to an average of $2,250, from an average of $3,500.