No good deed goes unpunished

I'm not a reflexive defender of my alma mater, but this story is filled with ridiculous whining about the best thing Harvard has done in some time.

I have occasionally defended to Europeans America's admittedly weird system of educational finance. We have progressive pricing - the rich pay full price, while the poor pay much less and the middle class get some breaks. What Harvard did in extending its plentiful resources much higher into the middle class makes this even more true than it used to be. It's a good thing, the next logical step from need-blind admissions, which Harvard also has allocated its resources to do.

Harvard's policy has the effect of making it more meritocratic in an America that increasingly is an aristocracy of wealth, and where wealth is again more and more stratified and static. That effect is good, even if it may keep a small number of brilliant middle class students from choosing George Mason University or Dickinson College. The weird thing is that their administrators are arguing that because Harvard is lowering its tuition (effectively), they'll have to raise theirs! Huh?

I also know that Harvard is a big, amoral, calculating institution. Its new program will increase its yield of matriculating students. That means it will offer admission to a lower proportion of applicants, as well, and both these numbers will improve Harvard's position in the US News rankings. There is no doubt that Harvard administrators are aware of this logic.

The stupid thing is that other colleges' administrators are puling about Harvard, instead of rightly complaining about the really infantile US News ranking system and its popularity in the unanalytical mainstream media.