The rising tuition will never be able to amount to a true progressive education tax, at least not unless Harvard starts charging tuition like the IRS. Instead, higher tuition will simply crowd out the middle class, reducing the numbers of students whose families benefit most from going to a less expensive school that requires fewer loans and that allows their families to make smaller payments. (More needy students face an equal burden of loans at Harvard as they would a public school because they receive full financial aid and accept a full loan burden wherever they go, provided they receive competitive aid packages).

Unfortunately, we don't know how threatened the middle class currently is at Harvard. While Harvard releases figures on racial and geographic demographics of undergraduates, it does not release figures on family income. It is hard to tell what the 70 percent of the student body on financial aid represents. All we do know is that the average grant Harvard gives is around $18,000 (it will be $20,000 next year reflecting the aid hike). We also know that only 50 percent of Harvard students are on Harvard aid. Twenty percent receive federal aid and work-study but not Harvard money. Those students, who don't qualify as "needy" are, to some degree, the middle class. Harvard has a tendency to lump these two groups together when it claims that 70 percent of Harvard students receive financial aid.

One indicator that Harvard has wider wealth disparities than America as a whole is the percentage of students it enrolls from public and private schools. Thirty-four percent of the Class of 2003 comes from private schools, but according to the Department of Education, only 9 percent of American high-schoolers attend private secondary schools. Assuming that students from private schools have higher family incomes than those at public schools (even though many suburban public schools have very wealthy student bodies and many urban private schools--parochial schools in particular--have poorer students), this is much greater wealth inequality than that existing in our nation.

At least, one might say, Harvard's financial aid policy contributes to social mobility. And, as our "President" would have us believe, maybe high income inequality can be mitigated by high income mobility.

But I believe, like Jefferson, that the basis of our democracy rests on the solid shoulders of a substantial middle class. I believe there is something inherent about equality that fosters and reinforces democracy in a way that social mobility cannot. Until Harvard reduces its tuition burden for the precious middle, and until George W.'s tax cut crashes and burns in Congress instead of on earth, I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping against extinction.

Meredith B. Osborn '02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.