Harvard endowment, barriers to education

Re “How Harvard could share the wealth,” Current, March 19

Peter Hong’s article neglects two key points. First, much of the endowment is earmarked for specific purposes and schools, so the amount of the $26 billion that can be spent in a discretionary manner is surprisingly low.

Second, although Harvard has only 6,600 undergraduates, it has close to 20,000 students if one includes graduate students. If free tuition were extended to all students, it would inflate the endowment payout to unsustainable levels. Expanded financial aid is a better solution because it would target students in need of the money across the university. Why give a tuition break to the child of a Fortune 500 chief executive or a student who will go into investment banking and make about $80,000 a year straight out of college, but not a Graduate School of Education student who will be a high school teacher or a School of Public Health student who will work to cure disease in Africa?

ADAM M. GUREN

Harvard student

Cambridge, Mass.

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Why not ask Harvard to consider putting a portion of its $26-billion endowment into our nation’s worst high schools so that every high school student could have an equal opportunity of making it to the top, regardless of socioeconomic disadvantage?

JEREMIAH D. BRAUNLIN

Ulster Park, N.Y.

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Harvard’s $41,675 sticker price is not what keeps low-income students from attending. The real barrier is the cost of houses in solid school districts, private high schools, Kaplan and Princeton Review courses, personal college counselors, tutors, camps, extracurricular activities, essay editing services: in short, the circus that now constitutes college admissions.

Harvard’s going tuition-free would be easy but expensive symbolism, a massive handout to wealthy families. Hong is right to worry about the concentration of moneyed families at top colleges. Unfortunately, the solution is less glamorous and a lot harder -- the laborious work of improving kindergarten-through-12th-grade education.

ADAM A. SOFEN

Woodland Hills