Anya Kamenetz Generation Debt

"If Your Family Earns Less Than $60,000 a Year, Harvard University Is Free."

That's what it read, in bold letters, on the poster I saw hanging on a door at New York City's Legacy High School, where I was attending a planning meeting for community members involved in public schools.

Harvard announced this decision last March, and followed up with an even more generous adjustment in December, declaring that families with incomes below $180,000 a year -- all but the top 5 percent of U.S. earners -- would pay no more than 10 percent of their income in college costs.

Yale followed suit with a similar announcement a couple of weeks ago, and Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore, Haverford, Dartmouth, Duke, and Bowdoin have all lowered the expected costs for families making up to six figures, in a new acknowledgement that middle-class and even upper-middle-class families can have trouble affording college.

Most media coverage of the change has argued that these tuition policies, while good news for a small number of families, are unlikely to sweep the nation. More than 80 percent of American college students attend public colleges that don't have the same resources to cut tuition costs even if they wanted to.

The skeptical view is that these private colleges, with their multibillion-dollar endowments, are simply trying to get out ahead of government regulation.

In the past decade, many private colleges have hired professional investment managers and made risky hedge fund investments, earning an average of 15.2 percent in 2006 -- all tax-free, of course. Harvard has grown its endowment from $7 billion to $35 billion since 1991 by pursuing this strategy.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been scrutinizing these practices and backing a new law that would require the 76 private colleges with endowments over $1 billion to pay out at least 5 percent of the money a year, a rule that applies to charitable foundations. Small coincidence then that Harvard and Yale's new policies happen to increase their endowment payouts to right around that 5 percent line.

Whatever the private colleges' true motivation, however, these new tuition policies are good news for all families and students who are struggling to pay for a college education. The reason goes back to that poster at Legacy School.

Harvard carries a disproportionate symbolic weight. An urban public high school like Legacy may send one graduate there every other year, at most, but knowing that an Ivy League education will be free or affordable for middle-class and working-class students who qualify can motivate millions of young people. In contrast to middle-class students with college-educated parents, low-income students, especially the children of immigrants or the first in their families to attend college, are more likely to be unfamiliar with the confusing student aid applications and to be daunted by high sticker prices.

Harvard's publicizing their free-tuition policy may help high-achieving students of few resources get the message that a private college may ultimately be able to offer them more assistance than the local public or community college. And more colleges may feel motivated or pressured to show that they care just as much about affordability as the big names do.

Luke Swarthout, a higher education associate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, agrees that the decisions made by certain schools can have a real impact.

"Harvard and Yale clearly set the tone," he says. "They drive the market for students and for faculty. There's a real trickle-down effect.

"To the extent that they encourage states and other institutions to focus on addressing real challenges, like access by low-income students, [Ivy League schools] can be a real force for good and progress."

The trickle-down effect has already begun. At a recent meeting of the University of California Board of Regents, a research group headed by UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau cited the Harvard and Yale decisions when recommending that the public university system create a $2 billion fund from private donations and tuition, and dedicate it to reducing college costs.

The University of California system is one of the largest in the world, with over 200,000 students. It also does a better job than many other large state systems at helping community college students transfer in and complete their degrees. A decision in California to redouble the resources dedicated to access would have a positive effect on a large number of students who really need the help.

The study found that within 10 years, even with existing student aid, the cost of attendance for students from families making less than $40,000 a year will average $16,700 or more, an amount that the chancellor called "unrealistic."

"Our ultimate goal is to guarantee accessibility for the indefinite future, not only for students from the poorest families but also for those from the middle class," he said in a statement. "It is urgent that we act now to avoid a crisis of accessibility in the near future."

With tuition rising at two or three times the rate of inflation, the college accessibility "crisis" has many causes, and it will take many different types of reform to address it. The cause that's gotten the most attention of late in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail has been the role of the federal government -- the largest provider of tuition assistance -- and the need to use taxpayer resources more efficiently so we're subsidizing students, not just student loan companies.

The recent decisions by a few private colleges raise the stakes for  other educational institutions to show that they're dedicated to holding down costs for students. I believe it's now time for families and communities to push for more accountability and transparency on the part of public institutions. Colleges need to show that they can be efficient in their use of resources and do more with less. Competition and smart consumer choices by students and families will ultimately be just as important to holding down college costs as contributions from the public and private sector combined.

Find the Princeton Review's list of the Best Value colleges here and US News and World Report's list of Best Value colleges here.