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Harvard has secondary online or executive revenue streams to monetize their brand. Having the premium product that they can charge so much for makes sense for them. They could afford to charge less, but easily obtained student loans allow universities with major endowments to play the market with massive war chests. Fundamentally, although initially well-intentioned, at this point, student loans help channel money to Wall Street.
I did not go to Harvard, but both my parents did for grad school, only my mother dropped out when her scholarship ended because it was going to be like two thousand dollars a year. (I'm not thinking of the exact numbers right now, but that was the ballpark.)
I use sites like Coursera and Khan Academy and Gale regularly, but, after getting a six figure education for undergrad (which took forever to pay off) I still took out six figures worth of student loans for grad school.
If I were independently wealthy, I'd just go to school forever. Online learning is awesome, but I love the in-person community experience when it works out.
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