Isn’t that the existing preschool-K-12 system?
I don’t think in our society you can stop rich parents from buying nice things for their kids.
But maybe–maybe–we can do something about people who think this has ever been a level playing field.
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The “luxury” brand of elite colleges is not always more expensive. For example, the median family income is ~$75k. Harvard has said that families with an income of $85k or lower have an expected contribution of $0, so Harvard has an expected parents contribution of $0 for the majority of families in the US. Harvard has said they are less expensive than state schools for >90% of families in US. Harvard is likely to be among the lower cost college options for middle class families, even if cost is >$0.
I think your question is more along the lines of, why are some wealthy families willing to pay close to $400k for their kids attending Harvard and gladly thank the college for the opportunity to do so, when they could pay a small fraction of that for other quality alternatives? While the Chetty study highlights some possible benefits, particularly for top 1% kids, I don’t think the degree of benefits listed in the Chetty study is the primary reason. I think it is instead marketing of an luxury brand, in a similar way to marketing for other luxury goods.
For example, I was listening to a podcast earlier today that discussed a luxury purse brand, with purses that sold for $60k each. The purses claimed to be outstanding quality with the best materials and best seamstresses creating the product, even though the appearance was largely unremarkable. That wasn’t why the purses could be successful with a high $60k price tag. Instead it was marketing the purse as a scarce and valuable luxury good.
There are extremely few purses from this brand available, and it requires strong effort or connections to obtain one. You can not just buy this brand of purse from Amazon or a luxury store. Instead you needed to go on a waitlist for what may be years to possibly get an offer to buy one. At one point there was a waitlist to go on the waitlist. Most persons who want to buy the brand don’t know why some people get an offer to buy one and others don’t, which leads to speculation and unique strategies. Sometimes being connected and knowing the right person can help. With so few people obtaining one and going through such a strong effort to do so, owning the purse has become a status symbol in certain circles. You can proudly walk around the neighborhood with your rare purse, and people who are in to rare purses will take notice. And there are also plenty of people who don’t care about owning a rare purse and would have negative thoughts when someone brags about their purse brand. A similar set of statements could be written about elite colleges.
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I think what’s happened is that ever since the dot.com boom of the late nineties/early 2000s, the American middle-class created a separate sub-class that benefitted disproportionately from the productivity gains that followed. I actually think it’s been a disruptive force in many different ways throughout American society. It’s different from the Old Upper Middle Class of high COL metropolitan centers; the new one seems to be much more suburban, much more centered around the Southwest and PNW. And because that’s where the biggest population gains are being made, the old eastern establishment colleges are chasing them rather than the donut-hole households that were their bread-and-butter a generation ago.
And, vice-versa you can’t stop colleges from chasing rich parents.
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Exactly.
What is this BMW dealership doing in this upper-class commercial district? Not really a mystery.
I keep harping on this, but at least in my middle-class public-school circles back in the day, we knew this. There was no illusion that the Ivy League and such was purely meritocratic, we knew it was like at least half rich kids. Didn’t stop some people from wanting to go there, but it was with eyes wide open.
And now these places cost so much more, and yet people are surprised this is still true? I kinda know the answer as to how that happened, but it is still interesting to me how some people seem to expect it will somehow be undone, and their shattered illusions made real.
But this is how the world works, at least as we have made it. You don’t have to love it, but you should not be surprised.
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Almost worth a thread of its own, except that I can predict how divisive it would quickly become.
SMU is at 24%, TCU is at 19%
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No kidding.
From my perspective, the equation:
kid merit <=> college ranking
. . . is not only obviously wrong, it is obviously cruel.
But I have learned over the last year or so of getting involved in social media surrounding college admissions that some families are so invested in that idea (even if they don’t put it quite that way) that they don’t take kindly to the implication that they are being wrong and cruel.
Of course as it goes on the Internet, there are other places where more parents share my perspective. Still, when you really focus in on that concept, it is not likely to end up a perfectly pleasant conversation.
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Nice catch @clockila Wow, SMU 24%!
The overwhelming majority of students would be just fine at the overwhelming majority of colleges and universities. The concept of “fit” draws a lot of attention on this website, but in the real world, students attend the school that is at the intersection of most prestige and affordability.
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I guess my S24 does not live in the real world.
Which sounds about right, actually.
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Your son wants to attend the least prestigious and most expensive university possible?
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It sounds counterintuitive, but at a macro level, many students favor less affordable options, over more affordable options.
For example, the study at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf begins by stating, "We show that the vast majority of low-income high achievers do not apply to any selective college . This is despite the fact that selective institutions typically cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the
two-year and nonselective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. "
As noted in the Chetty study that is the topic of this thread, kids who have too high an income to qualify for FA are tremendously more likely to apply to and attend Ivy+ type private colleges with steep price tags, rather than lower cost in state publics or schools that offer merit scholarships for high achieving kids.
Low income, high achievers generally favor the local publics, which are more expensive for them than many selective privates. And the high income, high achievers generally favor the selective privates, which are more expensive for them than in-state publics.
Focusing on prestige is also certainly not a given. Most college bound students apply to and attend in state publics, regardless of how prestigious their in state college system is. Only a small slice of the high school population is focused on attending the highest ranked USNWR type college.
My comment was about where they attend and not what they prefer.
Something in between the two extremes you have defined.
He is largely insulated from cost-of-attendance issues because of what we promised him, although I think he understands the resume value of something like a named merit scholarship.
Prestige, defined as a perception of relative value by the broader public, is largely irrelevant to him.
A lot of what matters to him are basically intrinsic to the experience. But he also wants to make sure if he does well enough in whatever he choose to study in the end, he will have good options for what happens next.
And he is smart enough to understand that is not a function of “prestige” in that above sense (or really any sense that would merit use of that term).
So his decision is going to reflect the intersection of a college that will provide him with good options and where he thinks he will have the best experience.
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The comments in the post applies to where they attend. I used the word “attend” multiple times within the post. Even when I didn’t say the word “attend”, it still applies. For example, if low income high achievers don’t apply to any selective colleges, they are unlikely to attend one.
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Actually not. Most students would not be able to afford the overwhelming majority of colleges and universities, so most of them are limited to commuting to a local community college or in-state public university. A few of the top students (overrepresented here on these forums) may be able to get admitted to the more selective colleges with good financial aid, or earn large merit scholarships somewhere.
Affordability is the most important fit factor unless the student has parents with lots of money and willingness to spend it on the student’s college education. Prestige is merely a very common fit preference among students and parents.
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I hear you. However, many elite schools are not as generous toward those households in the middle incomes and all the elite schools tend to stop the generous aid for those stuck between 60% and 99%.
As a practical matter, a family with an income of $180,000 may be “well off” but nowhere near able to foot a $90,000/year college bill for multiple kids. There is a vast difference in ability to pay between those in the top 1% making $5 million a year and a two-income family making $200,000.
Then, for those making less than $75,000, and eligible for great aid from the Harvards of the world, even the transportation and living costs involved can be a barrier — especially if the student is also expected to take out loans. It might work out great for the only child from a household making $85,000, and not so great for one of five kids from a $40,000 household.
I just have a distaste for the way greater privilege is often automatically equated to greater talent/merit. And the pressure it puts on some families to put themselves in a precarious financial situation to buy their way in.
Yep.
In fact, even for many “full pay” families, there would obviously be some limit to how much they would pay, there just don’t currently exist many if any colleges above their limit.
And they may also have some limits on where they are willing to be full pay. I’ve encountered stricter and looser senses, but I have personally never encountered someone who has literally said their kid can attend any college at any price. Like, we’re pretty open-minded, but our message is if you want us to pay more than a very good option, you need to explain to why this is an even better option. And that to us is a fit question.
So for some families, a relatively long list of colleges may all be considered an affordability fit. But that is going to be because of a combination of them having the resources to pay up to current “full” market rates, and having a relatively broad (but not necessarily unlimited) sense of where a full market rate is fitting.
But that is still affordability being part of fit, just in a relatively loose way due to that family’s available resources.
I guess it depends on what you mean by generous. But at a lot of these colleges, around half the class is getting financial aid, and it appears that is going to normally take you up to around the 90th percentile, give or take.
Yale, for example, publishes a chart:
https://admissions.yale.edu/affordability-details
For reference, $0-100K takes you through about the 65th percentile, give or take. 100% get aid, median $76925.
At $100-150K, 99% get aid, and the median is over $60000. That covers about the 65th to 80th.
At $150-200K, 95% get aid, and the median is over $46000. That covers about 80-88th.
$200-250K, 79% aid, over $31000 median. That is around 88-92nd.
It is over that aid drops to 25%, and under $29K median.
So . . . I don’t know. That seems quite generous to me up to at least the 88th or so. After that it is fading out, although you can apparently still get tens of thousands into the 90ths. Presumably that is mostly an assets question.
Looks like at Yale, they have a very good chance of cutting that roughly in half.
Totally agree, by the way.
I actually think one of the many ways people can end up privileged is just being better informed about all this stuff. Many families appear to have no real sense of what options they might have for need and merit aid. Without any real study, just anecdotally it seems to me the families who know that system well are skewing higher income.
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I think families tend to assume they won’t get any aid over a certain threshold. However, there are some schools (not a ton) where folks up to $250k are getting significant aid (meaning not a token $1-2k). We have a few friends that I was surprised to hear were getting aid that brought their private schools down to just a bit more than the flagship (I’d guess around $40k - compared to the sticker price of around $80k). That being said, the schools that offer that kind of generous aid to a wide swath of incomes are very tough to be admitted to. Most schools aren’t nearly that generous and have much lower thresholds for aid.
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