As a Harvard alum, I applaud the thought of having a tuition free school. The cost for Harvard would be $308 million annually, out of an endowment of $36 billion. The next largest endowment is Yale at 25 billion and their cost would be 258 million per year. Stanford ( 22 billion @ cost $322 million) and Princeton 22 billion@ cost $233 million). UT has an endowment @24 billion, but many more students. I doubt any other school could do this: eg Columbia 9 billion at a cost of 316 million). Obviously college costs have reached unbearable heights and something needs to be done, but the Harvard solution can only be offered by a select few.
The lion share of endowments come from alumni; hence the legacy preference. To pay for this largess, all the above colleges would need to rely even more on alumni donations. Thus legacy preferences would probably be even higher than they are now.

@ 13:54 Legacy preference is important for raising funds, passing along traditions and getting volunteers for all those Alumni jobs (visiting schools, spending hundreds of hours interviewing kids, helping the sports teams ect.). I like that my kid shares a suite with my roommates kid and that we know parents of many of his friends. We spend more time and give money to everything. We have generational experiences which impact how we alumni spend our money.

If you made Harvard admissions like Caltech it would no longer be the same great institution and it would no longer be desirable to many people. The students you rage against for the last 400 years have created the thing that make Harvard special... the combination of rich/poor/diverse/athletic/nerdy students throw together and exposed to all. It is where students find out that whatever they learned it was narrow, limited and provincial. Kids find out they are not that smart/rich/sophisticated/correct or everything else. But they learn that they can be whatever they want a billionaire or a teacher... anything. kids with big dreams smarts and access. You don't get famous poets, authors or inventors based on SATs and high school grades.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't have a problem. I think it's great that a board at an institution who has been successful for 400 years is asking the questions.

You still haven't provided a link proving that it is asking questions.

+1. This is my question as well. I'd be shocked if anyone on Harvard's board is agitating for these "improvements."

Since OP seems unable to make google work, I did the legwork for her/him. Here is a very interesting article on this issue:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/01/overseers-petitioners-challenge-harvard-policies

The candidates for Board of Overseers and their personal statements (those nominated by petition are at the bottom):

http://www.harvard.edu/candidates-for-board-overseers

From the Harvard Magazine article:

THE COLLEGE BOARD, academic analysts generally, and Harvard admissions officers have indicated that SAT scores are predictive of students’ possible performance during their first undergraduate year, but not beyond. In fact, dueling studies, including one just released, question whether the SAT even predicts one year of performance reliably. Presumably, evidence from PSAT tests, taken earlier in high school, has no stronger predictive value. And as noted, access to tutoring may have some influence on scores.

Harvard College’s admissions announcements have regularly noted that thousands more applicants than can be admitted to an entering class are at the top tier of various single-point measurements. For the class of 2010, for example, nearly 2,600 applicants achieved a perfect (800) score on the SAT’s verbal test, and 2,700 achieved that score on the math section: more than 10 percent of that year’s applicant cohort. (In recent years, the College has published SAT scores by the number of applicants exceeding 700 on the verbal, math, and writing sections: more than 10,000 in each category each year.) And applicants to the class of 2018 included 3,400 high-school valedictorians: one-tenth of those in the applicant pool, more than double the number of those eventually enrolled in the class—and down from the 3,800 valedictorians in the pool of applicants for the class of 2016.

Unz took note of the latter phenomenon in his 2012 essay, observing that “Harvard could obviously fill its entire class with high-scoring valedictorians or National Merit Scholars but chooses not to do so. In 2003, Harvard rejected well over half of all applicants with perfect SAT scores, up from rejecting a quarter a few years earlier….” (He did not address the possibility that the increase in rejections reflected rising applicant numbers.)

During an extended telephone conversation from Palo Alto on January 22, Unz was asked what he thought ideal admissions criteria and procedures might be, in pursuit of his preferred meritocratic process.

Unz responded that his ideal criteria were “not entirely clear,” and reiterated his call for “greater transparency” about admissions. The Golden book, he said, was a “horrifying” view of admissions, and his own analyses of admissions “shocked” him, making him “much, much more supportive of a much more meritocratic admissions” system focused on academic ability and performance. Evaluations based on determining “has this person been involved in that project, [and] all these essays,” in contrast, presented “tremendous opportunities for outright corruption.” In search of a system focused on his preferred academic criteria, he had suggested his “thought experiment” about randomizing much of the decisionmaking about most of the applicant pool.

IOW, Harvard should be using Unz's preferred criteria (I guess because his preferences are somehow the correct ones), but he really doesn't have any notions of how to build a better mouse trap. He just has "thought experiments."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't have a problem. I think it's great that a board at an institution who has been successful for 400 years is asking the questions.

You still haven't provided a link proving that it is asking questions.

+1. This is my question as well. I'd be shocked if anyone on Harvard's board is agitating for these "improvements."

Since OP seems unable to make google work, I did the legwork for her/him. Here is a very interesting article on this issue:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/01/overseers-petitioners-challenge-harvard-policies

The candidates for Board of Overseers and their personal statements (those nominated by petition are at the bottom):

http://www.harvard.edu/candidates-for-board-overseers

Here's a thought: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshfreedman/2013/11/14/the-farce-of-meritocracy-in-elite-higher-education-why-legacy-admissions-might-be-a-good-thing/#139414213b5a

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's a good idea. I went to Yale, not Harvard, but Yale could afford free tuition also. I grew up middle class (both parents teachers) and got generous financial aid from Yale so I graduated with no debt. The amount my parents were expected to pay was reasonable to their circumstances and Yale was much cheaper than the other, less prestigious schools I got into because the financial aid packages weren't as large. If my kids get into Yale, I wouldn't want it to be free. I can easily afford the tuition and don't want Yale to spend its money subsidizing my family.

Also, one of the big advantages of going to a place like Yale is the chance to mix with people who are well-connected. A school where everyone is a smart kid from some random suburban high school (like I was) isn't nearly the same experience of a school with a mix of kids who are rich, poor, international, etc.

I don't get this. Are you saying that you don't want free tuition so Ivy League schools can stay hotbeds of wealth and privilege?

Yes, that's what PP is saying...

You Americans are all crazy

Responding to this narrow point: What I am saying (not the PP quoted above) is that free tuition at Ivy League schools will do nothing to affect the number of wealthy and privileged students at Ivy League universities. Absolutely nothing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's extremely doubtful that there would be a link to any board level discussions.

Yes, it looks like another "Let more Asians into Harvard!!!!" incitement.

Now that is racist.

AA supporters only care about discrimination against blacks.

[quote=Anonymous]Harvard is having its annual Board elections (it has two) and one slate for one of the Boards is pushing for this agenda. Typically a small percentage of alums vote but this year I am receiving daily/hourly reminders to vote. The opposition to this slate is organized.

Personally, I do not think it should be free. My parents paid and we are paying for our kids (so are all our friends). We also support the current admission standards. As [b]a group, our legacy kids were viable without legacy status. Top privates around the country, with honors, ECs, awards, tests score and sports. Same scores for URMs and others. [/quote][/b]

If they are viable, why do they need a special admission policy that has them competing only against each other?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's extremely doubtful that there would be a link to any board level discussions.

Yes, it looks like another "Let more Asians into Harvard!!!!" incitement.

Now that is racist.

Harvard is having its annual Board elections (it has two) and one slate for one of the Boards is pushing for this agenda. Typically a small percentage of alums vote but this year I am receiving daily/hourly reminders to vote. The opposition to this slate is organized.

Personally, I do not think it should be free. My parents paid and we are paying for our kids (so are all our friends). We also support the current admission standards. As a group, our legacy kids were viable without legacy status. Top privates around the country, with honors, ECs, awards, tests score and sports. Same scores for URMs and others.

How are they going to create "more transparency"?

That's a nice ideal but I have no idea how it would be done in practice. Students should be admitted for more than strictly numerical criteria, but these are impossible to publicize in many cases. I mean, are you going to put my application online, rec letters and all, if I get in (and also if I don't so everyone can compare)?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's a good idea. I went to Yale, not Harvard, but Yale could afford free tuition also. I grew up middle class (both parents teachers) and got generous financial aid from Yale so I graduated with no debt. The amount my parents were expected to pay was reasonable to their circumstances and Yale was much cheaper than the other, less prestigious schools I got into because the financial aid packages weren't as large. If my kids get into Yale, I wouldn't want it to be free. I can easily afford the tuition and don't want Yale to spend its money subsidizing my family.

Also, one of the big advantages of going to a place like Yale is the chance to mix with people who are well-connected. A school where everyone is a smart kid from some random suburban high school (like I was) isn't nearly the same experience of a school with a mix of kids who are rich, poor, international, etc.

I don't get this. Are you saying that you don't want free tuition so Ivy League schools can stay hotbeds of wealth and privilege?

Yes, that's what PP is saying...

You Americans are all crazy

How are they going to create "more transparency"?

That's a nice ideal but I have no idea how it would be done in practice. Students should be admitted for more than strictly numerical criteria, but these are impossible to publicize in many cases. I mean, are you going to put my application online, rec letters and all, if I get in (and also if I don't so everyone can compare)?

Harvard is already free for more than 20% of the students who go there. Financials are not what's keeping the lower and middle class (real middle-class, not DCUM $250K middle class) out of Harvard

Anonymous wrote:It's extremely doubtful that there would be a link to any board level discussions.

Yes, it looks like another "Let more Asians into Harvard!!!!" incitement.