I can and I have!
These are ethical issues.
I’m not saying the government should dictate to Harvard or a church how they spend their money (although there are plenty of folks who do, or beleive that tax-exemptions for all these institutions should be revoked), but that doesn’t mean they should be exempt from criticism on how they spend their money and what they fundraise for.
“Harvard does the best job of all the elites and near-elites at doing this. Harvard screams this at their out-in-your-community admin rep meetings.”
Yeah, but which communities do they go to? And how do students/families know to come? There’s plenty of room for growth there. "
Exactly. Whoop-de-do that they go to New Trier and Naperville and Hinsdale Central (all affluent suburban areas)to tell them about their financial aid. They’re not going to the Back of the Yards or Joliet or Peotone.
I agree with panpacific. They’d do more good if they reserved and auctioned off x spots for $xx million apiece and used that money elsewhere.
I don’t see what’s wrong with “aggressive” fundraising. It’s still all voluntary on the giver’s part.
Given that guidance counselors all have college degrees and access to the Internet, exactly what rock are they hiding behind to NOT know that their top kids could have access to top schools ? So if they have a HYPS candidate, they track them and help them through the process or put them into Questbridge or hook them up with some local charity ?
Sure it would be nice to have an all expense trip to Cambridge or Hanover NH, but come on …
As far as middle class people go … again … spend a few days researching … use the advertised net price calculators and the government provided summary sites … this is not hidden info.
However, the Harvard type of scholarships are limited to a very small group of schools and thus very small group of students, and if you advertise you could have 10,000 more students apply to HYPS.
State schools should be affordable, which means under 30K plus financial aid for flagships, lower tuition for lower tier schools (less “prestige” and salary , very low for community colleges that have good instruction …
This is where you could have several hundred thousand people per state get a quality college education. We can argue about how many people or what percent of people need a college education, but our world is getting very technologically advanced and complicated … and we do need people to be able to move us forward, to a better future, and to solve our current problems. We need politicians that understand science, we need voters who can evaluate candidates …
Uh, PickOne, come into the real world where “college guidance counselor” is the job done by the same person who is dealing with students who are truant, students in bad family situations requiring social worker intervention, dealing with the student who needs to take a leave because her parent just died, etc. The fantasy of the person dedicated solely to college needs is simply that - a fantasy for the majority of hs in this country. How would this GC even know of the 300 or so kids assigned to her who is “HYP material” when these kids are basically strangers? Besides, most of these folks didn’t go to elite colleges themselves so they aren’t on their radar screens.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid
70% of Harvard students receive some form of aid
20% attend for free
100% graduate debt free
Guidance counselors often steer kids away from Harvard and other such schools thinking state schools are less expensive. It’s frustrating. I think the key is to inform GC’s.
"Yeah, but which communities do they go to? And how do students/families know to come? There’s plenty of room for growth there. "
The first line of information for parents regarding the next steps in their children’s educational careers has always been the schools and the guidance counselors.
Counselors and principles and assistant principles are all part of extensive local and regional organizations where information of this sort is disseminated. The counselors and high schools are also in receipt of mailings from colleges and universities all over the nation.
Just as has been discussed here at CC that the mailings which target Random Student ABC from University X are not specific to anything that has put that student on the radar of University X, the mailings go to the counselors and counseling offices as well.
That the information is then not disseminated is another issue. That the information may not have made it to the respective homes of the students is the next blight in the system.
That still means that 30% (the non-financial-aid ones) are from top 2-3% income families. The 20% attending for almost free (besides the expected student work earnings) are basically those from the bottom half or so of the US family income distribution, so that means that the family income distribution is skewed approximately to the following distribution:
30% from the 98th percentile and higher
50% from the 50th-98th percentile
20% from the 1st-50th percentile
Making Harvard free would benefit the 80% from the top half of the US family income distribution, not the 20% from middle and lower income families.
My GC definitely isn’t meeting one on one and suggesting schools for me, or for any of my friends and siblings… GCs are just trying to steer kids to community college and state schools. I know there is a program designed to help lower income kids go to college, but they’re designed to help kids fill out the FAFSA and apply to Affordable State U, not freaking Harvard.
100% CAN graduate debt free
GCs are just trying to steer kids to community college and state schools. I know there is a program designed to help lower income kids go to college, but they’re designed to help kids fill out the FAFSA and apply to Affordable State U, not freaking Harvard."
Exactly.
“Just as has been discussed here at CC that the mailings which target Random Student ABC from University X are not specific to anything that has put that student on the radar of University X, the mailings go to the counselors and counseling offices as well.”
And you’re not listening. The GC who has a caseload of several hundred students and is dealing with the truants, social workers, etc. doesn’t have TIME to learn the finer points of H vs Y vs P, much less figure out which of those several hundred kids might be HYP-worthy and counsel them accordingly. Their time is better spent ensuring a bunch of average Joes can afford ANY college than focusing on the one or two special snowflakes who are HYP-worthy.
^Not gonna argue with that, PG. My kids went to that high school. But can Harvard change that with a fly-in for the weekend?
My kids attend a public school that is universally considered one of the top public high schools in the nation. The community is filled with well educated, demanding parents, and the area is very affluent so the high school has many more resources than the average school.
Our guidance counselors are well meaning, reasonably hard working, and I think they really try to do right by their students.
However - if we were forced to rely on them for quality information about colleges or for “guidance”, then I would probably have put a bullet through my head. There is no way I’d entrust them with providing advice for my kids. The guidance counselors simply don’t have the time or the knowledge base or the judgement to process the information they do receive. Fortunately, my family has lots of other ways to get good information and advice (College Confidential is a good resource provided you can separate the wheat from the chaff, which is another great skill for students to learn but I digress).
I shudder to imagine what the situation is like at a “typical” high school.
“Given that guidance counselors all have college degrees and access to the Internet, exactly what rock are they hiding behind to NOT know that their top kids could have access to top schools?”
The same rock most of college-educated America lives behind. The education or counseling degree at Whoville State does not cover selective schools and their financial aid. That’s crummy and ought to be fixed, but that’s the reality we’re working with.
There are plenty of circles in America where they’d be agog at the holes in my knowledge. I know what’s relevant to my life and my community. They do too. That’s the issue – we’re talking about potentially moving kids from one planet within America to another.
I had a memorable visit last January to Southeastern Oklahoma State in Durant, Oklahoma. That campus was a big scary adventure to a lot of the students I was touring with. They considered Oklahoma University unimaginably urban, opaque, and far away. These kids will go be the teachers in their hometowns. And they’ll be good at relating to their kids, but it’s not an easy thing to explain Harvard to them. (Heaven knows I didn’t really grasp Durant, and that’s the big town.)
To be fair, Harvard’s resources are effectively infinite, but that’s not true of the admissions office. There are a million different institutional priorities competing for budget. I believe everybody in that office would love to double their staff and spend all the extra time visiting long-shot rural schools that will send Harvard one competitive applicant every ten years. They’re not in charge of the whole university, though. I think more counselor information, like fly-ins, could really help.
This assumes the class composition looks roughly the same in the future as it does today.
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
Should we be concerned about the justice of giving free tuition to very affluent families?
Most of the kids who are now attending Harvard at $60K+ could have chosen to go somewhere else for a lot less. Free money already is being showered on talented kids who don’t necessarily need the help. The most important effect may be to remove cost from the college selection decision entirely. Would this be a net benefit to the individual kids, to Harvard, and to the country? I think that on balance, it probably would be.
It would be good for the country to be able to say that in America, the best students can attend the best colleges, if they want to, entirely free of cost. It also would be good for the country to be able to say that in America, any college-prepared student can attend some good college for an affordable price. I don’t think those two aims are mutually exclusive (or even competing with each other.)
@compmom I am not sure where they get the 70% from on their website. Perhaps that includes students winning an outside grant.
Because closer to 60% get aid.
Hanna as usual is spot-on. There is such provincialism on CC to assume because the Ivies et al are the dream schools of every kid in Short Hills and West Windsor or whatever, that they are even on the radar screens of the smart kids in Oklahoma and Montana and Wyoming. Or a poor urban area.
“However - if we were forced to rely on them for quality information about colleges or for “guidance”, then I would probably have put a bullet through my head. There is no way I’d entrust them with providing advice for my kids. The guidance counselors simply don’t have the time or the knowledge base or the judgement to process the information they do receive”
Well put. Besides, it’s silly for them to spend their time on the finer points of elite school A vs elite school B when 95% of their college bound caseload will be going to the various state and directional schools. I personally think it was a BETTER use of our GC’s time to figure out how to get Joey, Johnny, Mary and Janie to afford Northern Illinois and Susie to have a plan to go from comm college to a 4 year school, than to concern herself with the finer points of Wellesley vs Smith for my kid - who had educated parents willing to figure it out.
I really think those of you sitting around thinking that GCs everywhere “know” their students and have nothing to do other than leisurely debate the finer points of elite schools are the ones living under a rock. An upper class rock to be sure, but a rock.