Harvard is going tuition-free for families making up to $200,000

The Ivy League school is significantly expanding financial aid to make undergraduate admission tuition-free for families making up to $200,000 and completely free for families making up to $100,000. Families making more than $200,000 can also qualify for aid, depending on circumstances such as the number of children in college and amount of debt they carry.

Harvard estimates that 86% of U.S. families could be eligible for financial help under the new system.

Selective universities have been dangling more money to attract middle-income families as a way to diversify campuses and tiptoe back from elitist reputations.

Schools including Stanford, Princeton and the University of Texas system cover tuition for students whose families earn close to or above six-figure salaries. Last fall brought a string of announcements from schools making their financial aid more generous, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Pennsylvania each boosting their free-tuition salary caps to $200,000.

The moves come as Harvard and other elite universities face public and political pressure over their response to student protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Alumni have withheld donations and second-guessed sending their children to their alma mater. An Ivy League degree is even becoming a turnoff for some employers.

Even so, admission to the schools remains fiercely competitive. Less than 4% of applicants to Harvard in the last admissions cycle got in.

Making schools such as Harvard more affordable “will open up the socioeconomic ladder to a lot of families, and to networks that they didn’t have before," said Adam Nguyen, the founder of Ivy Link, a college-admissions consulting business. Beyond the education that Ivy League schools confer, Nguyen said, graduates can expect a lifetime of connections and brand recognition—though he has noticed the reputational hit schools have taken with alumni and employers.

Starting this fall, incoming and current Harvard students whose families earn $100,000 or less won’t have to pay for tuition, housing or food, up from the prior threshold of $85,000. They will also receive extras like reimbursement for travel to visit home and winter gear.

Families making $200,000 or less will have tuition covered and could qualify for living costs. Those earning above that can work with the financial-aid office to determine whether they qualify for aid.

Even families making upward of $300,000 could receive tuition assistance, said Jake Kaufmann, Harvard’s director of financial aid. A family of two doctors earning $400,000, for instance, who are still paying off sizable medical school debt that has prevented them from owning a home or saving enough for college, could qualify for help, Kaufmann said. A family of eight living in Manhattan will be considered differently than a family with one child in a lower-cost city.

The goal, Kaufmann said, is to remove the ability to pay from the factors an admitted student will weigh when deciding whether to attend.

Without financial aid, attending Harvard costs $56,550 annually in tuition alone, and nearly $83,000 when room and board are included.

Student debt has saddled college graduates for decades. The amount of student debt outstanding in the U.S. has swelled to around $1.78 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. At the same time, the amount of grants and discounts being given by colleges has also risen.

Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com