Harvard cancels tuition...for neediest students -- in a bold move meant to encourage low-income students to apply to top-tier colleges, the Crimson compound will not charge its customary minimum fee to families making $40K or less per year. That's not too many families, since a whopping 75% of Harvard students come from the top 25% income bracket...and that's a big bracket. Speaking as someone whose $140,000 undergraduate education tab was shared by my parents and my school and the federal government and myself (to the tune of $16K in loans), every little bit helps. This is what really burns me about the system: talented kids don't even think of applying to selective colleges because they (often wrongly) assume they could never get enough money together, and meanwhile the school itself is full of upper-middle class kids who assume that everyone is in the same boat. I won't waste time railing against the super-rich legacy kids; it's the generic "doctor's daughter from Connecticut" whose parents charge the full tuition on a credit card ("to get frequent flyer miles") and who doesn't have to work a part-time job (or three) to make ends meet at school who take their liberal educations for granted. The kids who are working those jobs and missing out on time to study could really use the break, and I think it's admirable that Harvard is unclenching its notoriously tight fist for such a worthy cause.