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Harvard announces it won’t charge tuition to families with incomes under $200,000
(www.bostonglobe.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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That's family income. What your parents earn counts too.
Turning 18 is so confusing. You're old enough to fight, kill and die in a war in a place you've never heard of, but too young to drink. Your parents can disqualify you from student aid.
Can you think of a better proxy for financial stability that isn't obtrusively invasive?
I'm not saying it's perfect; I'm just saying I don't have a better idea. The intent is certainly reasonable.
Your parents can disqualify you from student aid at any age. My brother went to community college in his 30s and still had to complete a FAFSA (including parental income data) to apply for assistance.
Get married to another broke college student and suddenly you're super poor.
Source: I did this.
Only until age 26.
I'm poor and double that. Laaaame.
If you don't interact with them then that means you are feeding yourself, which means you have a job.
Congrats you aren't making more than 200k. Enjoy.
Not that complicate is it? Now if you are there and your parent are the way the fuck over there and you are sucking on the tit then you will add your parents income.
There has to be some objective method of categorising whether someone lives off their parents income or not: it's a relevant question to ask.
Someone can live in the same house as their parents while paying full rent and being responsible for their own food, effectively being economically independent. They can also live on the other side of the country while being 100% sponsored by their parents. It's not trivial to categorise whether someone qualifies for something like this.
Yes, and the federal government already has a way to make that determination. I forget what it is because it's been years, but they have one.
I still think it's a fair question to ask, because as far as I understand, there's nothing forcing Harvard to use the same method as the federal government. Have you seen anything on how they plan to do that?
It's a relevant question to ask if we want to continue with the system of paying for higher education. Which maybe we don't. You don't pay for high school.
It's a relevant question either way: Regardless whether you think all education should be free (which I agree, it should), this is about how they plan on resolving this specific case of making education more accessible right now.
Whether education should be free altogether is a whole different question. In that case, it would make sense to also discuss whether it should be free for everyone, or whether there should be some income limit.
In Norway we've landed on a solution where the education itself is free, but in order to qualify for a government stipend and government-backed loan (with very good interest rates) in order to support yourself studying you need to have a fortune below a certain (high) threshold. Personally, I think that's a nice trade off between accessibility and preventing rich people from making money off of a welfare program.
The student doesn't pay for highschool, but there are still fees. My income was low enough that they waived the (roughly) $500-700 a year though. They based it off the paperwork to qualify for free/reduced lunches.
They will ask you for your taxes for previous years that shows you as being on your own. There are teens that do get emancipated from the parents before 18, which they also have to show they can live and support themselves.
FAFSA, don't know if it will continue to be alive since these assholes are destroying everything will ask you these questions. California also had a CCC program that use to help with getting free college. If so depends on your state as well.
My bad for sounding like a dick.
Every student could apply for parent-independent support. There are processes from other countries to learn from.
idk how it works in the US but in the UK you have to provide evidence that you've been living without any family support for more than 3 years, I had a housemate who had to work every hour he didn't have lectures because he'd only been on his own for 2 and a half years. Granted that it only affected his maintenance loan and not the tuition loan but he still couldn't afford to eat.