Vanity fair had a (IMO) much better article on Harvard's endowment drop at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard200908 http://www.vanityfa

Vanity fair had a (IMO) much better article on Harvard's endowment drop at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard200908 http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard2... Also, from the Vanity Fair article note: Officially, the university charges $48,868 a year for undergraduate tuition, room, and board that’s an increase of 50 percent over the last 10 years but only a small number of students actually pays that much. Back in 2004, under growing pressure from Washington, and in response to outsiders who accused the school of (a) elitism and (b) hoarding its immense wealth, Larry Summers shook up the world of higher education by announcing that students whose parents earned $40,000 a year or less would be able to attend Harvard gratis. Two years later, that cutoff was increased to $60,000, a figure well above the median U.S. household income. Still, Harvard pressed ahead in its efforts to ease the growing burden of tuition. In December 2007, declaring that excellence and opportunity must go hand in hand, the university’s new president, Drew Faust, made another stunning announcement: henceforth, students whose parents earn as much as $180,000 a year would pay no more than 10 percent of their family’s annual income in tuition fees.