“It made a huge difference in the ability of students to access higher education but we knew we were going to have to do it again,” Nixon said. “When you are in tight budgetary times you don’t just win the fight one year, because the funding is annual.”

The conflict to some extent also soured relations with the federal government, with several Harvard faculty members condemning an invitation for Reagan to visit Harvard for the University’s 350th birthday celebration in 1986.

COPING WITH TODAY’S FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE

Harvard’s current financial aid program, research programs, and student life funds have faced budget anxieties of varying severity due to a struggling economy.

Harvard’s scholarship budget today is $145 million, according to Director of Financial Aid Sally C. Donahue. Next year, $158 million is allotted.

“That’s about a 9 percent increase at a time when we’re all trying very hard to keep our operational budget level,” Donahue said. “I will say we’ve certainly had to come up with a lot of numbers behind the scenes and predict what we think our needs are for the next year.”

Some of the strategies Harvard’s Financial Aid Office has used to trim expenditures involved streamlining publications, reducing travel expenditures, and making increased use of their website to cut mail costs, she added.

“There have been a lot of parents who have been losing jobs, and people have experienced all kinds of financial hardships that really make it difficult for them to come up with the amount we expected them to contribute,” Donahue said. “We’ve been able to respond, which is really extraordinary.”

She said that a decade ago, students graduated mired in loan debt, but in 2008, the University began

eliminating the need for student loans in its aid packages. Instead, students’ financial needs are met with a combination of grant assistance and term-time jobs.

“Our hope is that [these aid policies] will enable students to go forth and pursue the career of their dreams without feeling burdened,” Donahue said.

In contrast to 1985, the Obama Administration is expanding federal financial aid—in his State of the Union Address, Obama promised to increase Pell Grants and forgiveness of student loans after 10 to 20 years, among other reforms.

The recent healthcare overhaul included legislation to move away from bank-funded loans toward an expanded direct-lending program run by the federal government. This adjustment was intended to direct $36 billion across 10 years to Pell grants for students from low-income families.

Today, alumni benefactors are heavily recruited to fill financial aid gaps. Without assistance from these individual donors, “we wouldn’t be pulling in students who were representative of what the world is becoming...and we might not be graduating students who were the true movers and shakers of the next few decades,” Donahue said.

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