Ron Lieber of the New York Times: (any relation to Dean Ben, do you think?)
To me, the best pitch of all would invoke a specific debt. Universities tend not to remind alumni of the precise sum of their four or more years of scholarships. It would look too much like a bill. But I should [...]

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Whoa.
Aid applications increased 16 percent for students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 21 percent at Boston University, 46 percent at Amherst College, and 40 percent at Williams. According to federal data, applications soared 65 percent at Harvard, which last year announced a major expansion of its financial aid program to families well up [...]

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More press, including a bunch of quotes from Pres. Marx.
Update: link has been corrected.

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Thanks to anathan10 for this piece about enrollment by low-income students into elite colleges.
The proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the nation’s wealthiest colleges and universities actually dropped between the 2004-5 and 2006-7 academic years.
Thankfully, we’re doing better:
A few colleges surveyed had made small but real gains in the proportion of low-income students they enrolled, [...]

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