The (Moderately) Rich Get Richer
13th December 2007
Read it.
But then the entire question of financial aid at Harvard (and Yale) is a farce: it would cost only $238 million—about 1 percent of an endowment that gained $5 billion in fiscal 2007—to pay tuition, room, and board for all Yale College students this year. Financial aid is about increasing the size of the applicant pool so you can turn more of them down, and win the prestige that comes with enhanced selectivity.
So you establish rules that say that you value diversity, then set the price so high that admission is controlled by the financial aid decision rather than the formal offer to admit. That way you can ignore diversity behind closed doors while piously praising it in public. Very clever, these People of the Crust.