If you're a high school senior, looking for a decent but affordable Mainland college, consider this one-of-a-kind bargain: Harvard University.

Yes, that's Harvard. The Ivy League school, which currently costs more than $45,000 per year, will change its financial aid program to ease the burden on middle-income families, who are neither poor enough to get a meaningful tuition break, nor wealthy enough to not care.

Globally it's a tiny step, of course. Most college-bound students from Hawai'i won't be going to Harvard or those other elite, dauntingly expensive schools next fall.

But it's an encouraging step nonetheless, one that recognizes that the skyrocketing costs of private universities — and out-of-state tuition at public ones — are increasingly beyond the reach of the broadest sector of society: the middle class.

There's hope that other top-tier universities, even those without a $35 billion endowment like Harvard's, will offer similar packages. It would give more students from all income ranges better choices among the best educational opportunities the country has to offer. And that's a good thing.

Here's a sample of how Harvard's plan works: Qualifying families earning between $120,000 to $180,000 per year would pay no more than 10 percent of their annual income. If you make less than $120,000, you pay a smaller percentage. For many families, that could mean a Harvard education for $18,000 per year or less. Relatively speaking, that's a good deal. In 2005-06, the average yearly cost for undergraduates at a four-year private institution was $27,317, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The financial aid comes in the form of grants, not loans. Like some other universities, Harvard's financial-aid calculations will no longer consider the equity in a family's home, which, in Hawai'i's hyper-inflated real estate market, can create a false impression of wealth.

So for parents torn between taking out a second mortgage or just saying no, perhaps there will soon be a third option: Yes, we can afford it.

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