Elite US colleges forfeit student aid after Trump attack

Leading US universities have abstained from millions of dollars in federal economic aid after the president and lawmakers who approved the money castigated them for taking it.

Harvard, Princeton and Stanford universities issued statements relinquishing the assistance, partly intended to help their low-income students, saying they expect that other institutions face even greater need.

The money was part of a $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) coronavirus-related economic relief measure approved last month by Congress that contained $14 billion for higher education.

Donald Trump signed the bill at the time, but this week accused Harvard of improperly taking it. At a White House briefing, where he was discussing a separate relief bill, Mr Trump said Harvard, with academia's largest endowment, “is going to pay back the money – and they shouldn't be taking it”.

Harvard, in a statement, denied any involvement in the matter, and asked that any money intended for it be distributed to other institutions in Massachusetts. “Harvard did not apply for this support, nor has it requested, received or accessed these funds,” it said.

Princeton and Stanford issued similar statements.

Congress said in the relief bill that US universities could use half the $14 billion to defray their own virus-related losses, and use the other half to provide emergency cash to their students.

The allocations, based on institutional size and student income data, would have meant $8.6 million for Harvard, $7.3 million for Stanford, and $2.4 million for Princeton.

The US education secretary, Betsy DeVos, in a 9 April letter, asked institutions whose students did not need the money to “consider giving your allocation to those institutions within your state or region that might have significant need”.

Ms DeVos did not mention weighing institutional wealth or endowment size. Most of Harvard’s 6,500 undergraduates receive some type of financial aid, and about one-sixth have family incomes so low they qualify for federal Pell grants.

The president's comments, and similar attacks from Republican lawmakers, sparked rounds of online criticism of Harvard, accusing it of ignoring “real need”.

Higher education experts, however, blamed the politicians for not taking the time to be clear with the aid package.

If Congress had wanted, said Kevin Carey, the vice-president for education policy at the policy study group New America, it could have excluded all institutions that pay the federal endowment tax.

“There’s nothing wrong with colleges asking for money that Congress explicitly decided to give them,” Mr Carey said.

“The legislation was put together so quickly,” said Robert Shireman, director of higher education policy at The Century Foundation, “that the debate is happening afterward rather than before.”

Congress and the White House also are suffering blowback from the separate aid bill meant to benefit small US businesses that Mr Trump had erroneously tied to Harvard. There as well, lawmakers appear to be regretting their strategy of funnelling taxpayer money through private partners rather than paying it directly to their intended recipients.

The controversy comes as the US university community more broadly has argued that the $14 billion bailout falls far short of what they will actually need to cover virus-related losses and avoid possible campus shutdowns.

The result, said Mr Shireman, a White House policy adviser in the Clinton administration, will hopefully produce a more “appropriate approach for the distribution of the next bill”.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com