A report shows that Harvard University's initiative to recruit lower-income students is working, part of an effort intensifying at top colleges nationwide to push for economic diversity.
The report, issued last month, discusses the results of Harvard's Financial Aid Initiative, which was implemented in 2004 to expand aid and recruitment for students from low-income families.
Under the initiative, Harvard families with incomes less than $40,000 do not have to contribute to tuition costs. Families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000 now pay $1,250 less per year.
In a sign that the measures may be working, Harvard's class of 2009 included 29 more students with family incomes under $60,000 than the class of 2008, a 1.8 percent increase.
Penn Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson said that he was not surprised by the report and that Harvard's initiative has also benefited its peer institutions.
The report shows "that schools of choice, the most selective in the United States, are reaching out more and are more welcoming and more encouraging" toward lower-income students, he said.
Penn Financial Aid Director Bill Schilling said that the University meets the full need demonstrated by any student and that the aid granted depends not only on income but also on a family's overall situation. However, a family with an income under $40,000 can receive up to about $45,300 in aid.
Harvard public policy professor Christopher Avery and economics professor Caroline Hoxby co-authored the report after Harvard's admissions office expressed interest in a formal evaluation of its financial aid initiatives.
Research has shown that lower-income students are underrepresented in Ivy League schools, Avery said.
He added that the report confirms that there are well-qualified, low-income students who are interested in attending top schools.
Avery added that this conclusion is consistent with that of similar research.
At Penn, Schilling said, about 250 undergraduates are considered "disadvantaged," typically meaning that their family income is under $40,000.
Schilling said that he has not seen a definite trend in enrollment of lower-income students.
This academic year, Penn boosted money granted to low-income students for incidental expenses by up to $1,000. Such students are also now expected to contribute about $1,400 less from their summer work savings.
Administrators at other top schools such as Amherst, Princeton, Yale and Williams have also recently emphasized the need to increase financial aid opportunities.
Stetson noted that long-established efforts to recruit lower-income students have intensified in the past few years due to a growing realization that this population in underrepresented on campuses.
But "all the institutions in the country have had, for years, special efforts to reach into the middle and lower-income areas of the United States," he said.
He added that Penn recruits students from these areas more aggressively than many peer schools do.
Despite initiatives at several competitive colleges and universities, Theodore Bracket, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education's director of federal relations, is unsure how widespread the efforts are.
"I don't think we can call it a trend yet," Bracket said. "There have been a number of very sincere efforts to look into this and to address this question."
