20% of Harvard students pay nothing. [1]

55% receive needs based scholarships, with families making less than 150k per year paying less than 15k per year.

Sure there are a lot of rich kids and legacies. But to say it only benefits the wealthy is just wrong.

1 - https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet

It connects wealthy to smart kids so they can continue to protect their wealth.

The poor kids are there to benefit the legacy kids.

Harvard and it's peers are some of the very few academic institutions that have need blind admissions and generous need-based financial aid.

For poor students, Harvard and its peers are pretty much the only free college options besides merit scholarships.

Only 1.8% are students from poor families: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

That is 100% not what the link says.

Hey, 82% are not 1%ers!

That distribution really is extremely heavily skewed, so I think the original comment is correct, I can't see how it's improving equality.

If 1.8% were poor and Harvard helped them become rich adults, probably 65% were rich and Harvard helped them stay rich as adults.

they have plenty of money given tiny, static class sizes, and that population you're referring to is already a small one of a small overall student body.