Harvard

Philosophically, one of the dangers is we've made debt a four-letter word. I wonder what it will do to a generation that will go to college without any personal sacrifice. You start taking loans away, and you start saying, `Here's a free ride.'" - LEE COFFIN, dean of admissions at Tufts University, who opposes the move by Harvard and other universities to eliminate loan obligations for students from upper-middle-class families

Don't automatically scratch Harvard University off your college wish list because of its steep price. The Ivy League school is overhauling its financial aid policies to attract more middle- and upper-middle-income students. Grants, for instance, will replace loans in undergraduate aid packages starting in the fall. And parents with incomes under $180,000 won't have to pay more than 10 percent of their income. That's a big discount at a school that costs more than $45,000 a year. So if you have your heart set on Fair Harvard, apply.

Edward R. Haley, a World War II veteran, Harvard graduate and tractor-trailer salesman known for his dry wit, died Wednesday of complications from pneumonia and lung disease at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The 83-year-old had been living with his son in Jarrettsville. Mr. Haley, the youngest of five brothers, grew up outside Boston in Medford, Mass. He was an athletic youth, spending much of his time playing football and hockey with neighborhood boys. He attended Medford High School and graduated in 1940 at 16. "Growing up in Boston, he had that stoic, Boston Irish-Catholic wry wit," said his daughter, Christine Haley Thomas of Baltimore.

WASHINGTON -- Do African immigrants make the smartest Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if you were judging by statistics alone, you could find plenty of evidence to back it up. In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by sociologists including John R. Logan at the State University of New York, Albany, black immigrants from Africa averaged the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Maryland women's basketball coach Brenda Frese hasn't shied away from sizable gambles during the Terps' rise to prominence, and in the first game of her team's defense of a national title yesterday, she made perhaps her biggest roll of the dice yet. At the beginning of Maryland's 89-65 win over Harvard in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Frese benched sophomore point guard Kristi Toliver for junior Sa'de Wiley-Gatewood, who...

The game What -- NCAA women's tournament Dayton Regional first-round game Where -- Hartford (Conn.) Civic Center When -- Today, 2:30 p.m. (approximate) TV -- ESPN The teams No. 2 seed Maryland -- 27-5; Atlantic Coast Conference third place (10-4); 16th NCAA tournament appearance. No. 15 seed Harvard -- 15-12; Ivy League champions (13-1), sixth NCAA tournament appearance. The frontcourts At 6 feet 3, sophomore forward Katie Rollins is the only Crimson starter above 6-2, but she is also the only starter to average fewer than 20 minutes a game.

For the past year, ever since Maryland won its first women's basketball national championship in Boston, a clip of either Kristi Toliver or Marissa Coleman has appeared during the introduction to ESPN's SportsCenter. If Toliver, Coleman or someone else from the Terps gets her SportsCenter moment for the coming year, she'll certainly earn it, as the Terps were given a virtual minefield to navigate when the NCAA tournament field was released last night. MARYLAND VS. HARVARD Dayton Regional first round, Hartford (Conn.

BOSTON -- I would have bet big money that we'd have a female president of the United States before we had a female president of Harvard University. It's not just that Harvard predates the United States by more than a century and a half. There's a higher percentage of women in the Bush Cabinet than in the tenured faculty ranks of Harvard. But now comes Drew Gilpin Faust. The dean of the Radcliffe Institute has been chosen to take over the helm of what is often referred to - fondly, arrogantly and sarcastically - as the "world's greatest university."

Recalling her coming of age as the only girl in a privileged, tradition-bound family in Virginia horse country, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, has often spoken of her continued confrontations with her mother "about the requirements of what she usually called `femininity.'" Her mother, Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly, "It's a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be." Instead, Faust left home at an early age, heading north to be educated at Concord Academy, a girls' prep school in Massachusetts, and at Bryn Mawr College, a woman's college known for creating future leaders, and to rise as a leading Civil War scholar.

Harvard University is set to name the first woman president in its 371-year history to succeed Lawrence Summers, who left his post after questioning the ability of women to master science, the campus newspaper reported yesterday. The appointment process is highly secretive, and Alan Stone, Harvard's vice president for public affairs, said he could not confirm the choice of Drew Gilpin Faust. But The Harvard Crimson reported that the university's 30-member Board of Overseers would meet tomorrow to affirm her selection as the university's 28th president.