There is some pretty solid evidence here:
My point was that people with higher incomes/assets pay less for houses and cars. You do you.
Steal means something was taken without consent.
I wasn’t aware that people were forced to pay for pricey schools.
@OHMomof2, need blind is not real. You can absolutely bet that all schools make sure they admit X% of students who will pay full boat, this way they can give some of that money to those who need it. College admissions is yet another means based wealth redistribution scheme. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Schools don’t know who is going to pay full boat and they DON’T CARE because MOST students aren’t getting anywhere close to their need met. They’re going to public schools where they’re going to pay whatever it costs because that’s their cheapest option.
Good grief.
If you are opposed to having your wealth redistributed as a fullpay, then target other schools where you are eligible for some type of discount (e.g., merit aid). No one is holding a gun to your head to be a fullpay.
Our family doesn’t qualify for a discount based on need, so our kids look elsewhere. There are PLENTY of other schools.
@GMTplus7 , agreed, just making point that admissions does have an idea of income levels based on zip code and it does factor in decision. They will never admit it though
@GMTplus7 -The fact that there is a remedy for a wrongdoing doesn’t negate the wrongdoing. Of course full pay parents can and often do skip schools that use their money to subsidized others. That doesn’t make the practice ethical.
We recently bought a car. Can you imagine the car dealer telling us that the car would cost $25k if we make x but $15k if we made less? How is that ok?
If only there was some list of schools available that do not offer merit, so one could ignore them and concentrate on those that do.
“We recently bought a car. Can you imagine the car dealer telling us that the car would cost $25k if we make x but $15k if we made less? How is that ok?”
We negotiate for our cars, and if the price isn’t acceptable we walk out the door. Do you just take the price on the sticker for granted?
Because there being “a wrongdoing” is a political statement, we will agree to disagree.
It’s not a wrongdoing. It’s the capitalist consumer system at work. If you don’t like how a product prices and / or markets its services, feel free to go elsewhere. If you don’t like how Southwest airlines doesn’t assign seats, don’t buy a ticket there. If you don’t like how Bloomingdale’s sells fur coats, don’t shop at Bloomingdale’s. And if you don’t like how elite schools do either their admissions or the pricing, you are perfectly free to ignore those schools and move on your merry way - just like the vast majority of American parents / students do, who don’t give one moment’s thought to the schools we all collectively obsess over. It would only be “unethical” if if these schools were the only game in town. They aren’t, by a long shot.
The capitalist consumer system as you describe it, @Pizzagirl, does work quite well—except that it requires a fully transparent market, and the college pricing market isn’t even remotely transparent.
There are a lot of things that aren’t transparent. My gastro charges a couple of hundred dollars to do a colonoscopy plus a couple of hundred to the anesthesiologist and the charge from the day surgery center. If I do it through insurance it costs thousands of dollars. If you have homeowner’s insurance and file a claim for a certain type of loss, your rates will stay the same. For other losses- your premiums will increase (and in some instances, substantially). I am a safe driver who has never had a claim, but my rates are based on the zip code where I park my car at night. Why am I being penalized for other people’s carelessness?
It is a myth that financial aid is the only product/service which isn’t fully transparent or which has a variable component (i.e. not everyone pays the same). Do I pay a fee to a credit card company when I pay off my balance every month? No I don’t- but paradoxically, it is more profitable for the company to issue cards to folks who carry a balance. So they are getting screwed (twice- they pay a fee for a card, and they pay the interest on their balance) and I get a free ride on their backs with my no fee card plus points and goodies.
Can you imagine the car dealer/mortgage co telling us that the car/house payment is going to be much higher than it would if we had a higher income because then we could get the super-duper-low-rate financing or put more down to reduce the rate or go for the 15 year mortgage? On the exact same car/house? Happens to low income people - even those with great credit - solely because of their income.
As has been pointed out, take your business elsewhere if you don’t like how some colleges do it, as we are also free to do if we don’t like the way loans for cars/houses work in wealthy people’s favor.
No foundation is spending millions of dollars to support your driving. There is no donor base for whom it’s a priority that all good drivers have an affordable car. At many, if not most schools your full tuition doesn’t cover the cost of your own child’s education, much less the cost of anyone else’s. Here’s Middlebury’s breakdown:
http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/423323/original/financial_17_infosheet_june_2012.pdf
Note that 67% of revenue is tuition and only 17% of expense is financial aid.
OHMom - If you are offended, of course you can, and should, take your business elsewhere.
However, the reason it costs less is there is less RISK - that is determining the reduced interest rate. You want to pay my increased risk premium so we can both pay the same price? If yes, can I borrow some money from you? Note, I may not be able to pay you back (insert winking emoticon).
Airplane ticket pricing isn’t transparent. What are my hundreds of thousands of miles on AA and United “worth”? Depends how smartly I redeem them for, and on what. BTW, they’re “worth” more the higher status I am, because they give me access to better goodies. Is that “fair” to infrequent travelers?
There are so many misconceptions here about money and math that I don’t even know where to start. None of these is even remotely comparable to what is going on with college pricing.
There are two issues - one is that the cost of college education is simply too high. No question that we need to do something about this, and this is one of the biggest problems facing/caused by higher education. The second issue is differential pricing based on ability to pay.
I happen to think - and almost all of my fellow alumni agree with me - that helping talented low income students attend college is one of the best investments that we as a society can make. Much of my college education was funded by alumni donations, and the taxpayers probably spent more than $500,000 (in present-day dollars) sending me to graduate school.
But it would never occur to me to demand any of this as a “right”. I am incredibly grateful to both groups for the help they gave me, and I hope that I’ve repaid this investment many, many times over.
There are many schools that do not have the charitable support or investment returns to fund many scholarships, so they have to rely on tuition cross-subsides to support low income students. I hope that those families who are able to pay full tuition know that the additional sacrifices they are making are deeply appreciated and will benefit many students. Thank you.
Supply and demand. Colleges, especially the fancier, status-y ones charge whatever the market will bear. As long as they can convince you to come up with the money somehow, deciding what you can manage according to their agreed upon collective criteria, but that the sacrifices will be “worth it” and then some, then prices will stay inflated and keep on increasing faster than the average cost of living. I have heard that a lot of the tuition increases are to provide for a well-paid upper-level administrative strata, while the actual instructor levels fare less well. And let’s not forget building fancier facilities to attract more paying customers. But that’s the nature of the game today. It’s up to the consumer to decide what can be realistically afforded and if it’s actually worth the money.