<p>
You must have a well-paying job in order to pay a lot of taxes. Be thankful for that in today’s weak job market.</p>
<p>Like most people, I would rather be your situation - working, making a lot of money, and pay a lot of taxes. And not worrying about how to pay for my kids’ college education.</p>
<p>Beliavsky–an educated society benefits everyone. If you don’t agree, visit Haiti, any country in Africa, etc. Allowing children from lower income families to attend college helps you more than your tax dollars going to support those kids at that school. On top of which, most of the subsidies for scholarships, etc. come from endowment funds at various schools, from donors, NOT your tax dollars. Your tax dollars ARE subsidizing your child’s education if they go to an instate school.</p>
<p>I GLADLY pay every penny in taxes we do to afford the quality of life and the luxuries we have. Coming from a low income family my self, I am EVER grateful for those that were generous enough to help me through college so we can return the favor–and we DO. We are now in a position to pay for school for our kids, although they won’t be paying much to go because they are good students and talented athletes who will attend private schools for very, very little out of of pocket money. Considering we pay more in taxes each year than my Mom ever made in income, I say it worked out for the best, wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>The alternative is to pay millions more dollars to subsidize the welfare system for those without an education that can’t find jobs that pay enough to support a single person, let alone a family. Your choice.</p>
<p>“there are grants from the state and the federal government that make funds available for lower income families” begs the question – where exactly does this money come from? It comes from tax dollars that people have paid into the system. The government doesn’t simply HAVE the money. It has to come from somewhere. THAT’s why it’s a bad thing. The government didn’t build the roads or the schools. They took my money to do it (and then borrowed from my children and my grandchildren and their children, etc. . . )."</p>
<p>I guess this is a values-based question. I wouldn’t have any problem paying high property taxes to fund a better public school district, even if I didn’t have children or if I personally chose them to send them to a private school. Ditto for whatever I pay towards my state’s state schools, even though I don’t send my children there. Perhaps Tea Partiers hold a different set of values.</p>
<p>“Perhaps Tea Partiers hold a different set of values.” – why is it that when there may be a discussion those who have the majority view feel empowered to be mean and uncharitable towards those with the minority view? One does not need to be a tea partier to be feeling the OP position. One just needs to be the bottom rung of those that make enough to be cut off from any aid from a college. There are plenty of private colleges that do not give any merit or athletic aid and have certain cut offs for finan. aid. If someone worked hard all their life, paid tons of taxes, saved for college, etc etc they may be extremely squeezed on all sides and will naturally resent someone who did not. They may also naturally resent a similar situation in public colleges, because even though they (the colleges) talk loud about giving merit aid, if you look closely, that aid goes primarily to the students that would get finan. aid anyway.<br>
Values have nothing to do with this sentiment, imo, having to open your pocket, which is not deep enough, does.
“The alternative is to pay millions more dollars to subsidize the welfare system for those without an education that can’t find jobs that pay enough to support a single person, let alone a family. Your choice.” – we are now going to be subsidizing millions in federal college loan defaults. All because “colleges duped us” into taking basket weaving majors at private colleges where we can “get the full college experience”. And now these students are graduating to a reality of not enough basket weaving jobs, and no way of paying off those loans.<br>
In terms of quality of life and luxuries of life we are way below any country in the “first world”, which makes me question your communion with the public services. Have you visited a post office in a large urban center or a hospital recently? Or closer to home - a public school that is not magnet/in a wealthy district? Are those really worth the hard earned taxes? Do they actually serve the needy or do they only act as bandaid, and is throwing more money on top of the problems the solution?
I do strongly agree that an educated society benefits everyone. It is time to revamp our secondary education so that kids do not graduate from it not knowing how to do basic things.</p>
<p>mhmm–then find one of the 100’s of schools that DO give merit or athletic aid. You do have choices in the matter and if you can’t afford school A, look to schools B-F?? And yes, I have visited a hospital lately, too many times lately actually, our schools, public, non-magnet are FANTASTIC. We are hardly behind any other first world country when it comes to quality of life in the US, not even CLOSE to behind. Travel, see the world, see where people live, see the car, yes CAR, they drive, look at their schools and hospitals and then tell me how bad off we are.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is only true at schools that offer generous need-based aid. Send your kid to a school that gaps (which is most schools) and you’ll find that you are paying pretty much the same tuition. </p>
<p>Anyway, paying “much higher tuition” is your choice. You could also choose to tell your children that you are willing to pay up to $XX,XXX per year (or $X,XXX), and if they want to go to a school that’s more expensive than that, they can find merit aid.</p>
<p>^^ You are supremely lucky to have FANTASTIC public school options that are non-magnet, in a non-wealthy neighborhood. Also extremely rare.<br>
In terms of not even CLOSE to behind - we are safely in the middle of the index, which isnt good enough for me for the amt of taxes Im paying.
In terms of the 100s of schools that DO give merit aid - I am supremely lucky, humble and grateful in that I am able to provide my kids with private education, both secondary and higher. However one of my volunteer capacities has been helping families to obtain finan. aid. If a family makes above certain #s they are really between a rock and a hard place. Merit aid doesnt always go to the just deserving. In many many instances it goes to the deserving who would receive finan. aid anyway. Thats a dirty little secret to merit aid. In terms of find colleges B-F - that is a problem in todays economy since many employers wont look at graduates of college F.</p>
<p>mhmm–then look at the 100’s of schools that give automatic merit aid–see, there are a LOT of choices out there and you are OH SO WRONG about employers not looking at colleges B-F. It is a fallacy, especially exaggerated on CC, that where you graduate from makes ANY difference in your job prospects, with the possible exception of MAYBE a job on Wall Street but even then, the right person will get the job. The only kids I know struggling to find jobs these days graduated from these “A” schools. ALL of the kids I know from the state directionals had jobs in their fields before they graduated. It’s complete and utter BS that if you don’t go to a top 10 school you will flip hamburgers for life.</p>
<p>^^ For someone who doesnt qualify for finan. aid, automatic merit aid is not enough.
Further, if you have a kid who is genuinely intellectually curious and extremely smart, going to colleges with kids whose sat scores are 500 points lower is just plain stupid. It wouldnt help their grad school chances either.
Yes, I had been talking about wall st and related jobs since I live in NYC and so are the people I volunteer with, and of course they would like to see their kids come back to the neighborhood.<br>
Again, you are so lucky to know only kids with jobs before they graduate. And again, extremely rare.<br>
I agree with your assessment of flipping hamburgers for life correlating to top 10 schools. But there IS such a thing as learning for learning itself, and I would wager that most Directional Us dont provide an opportunity in the quality of its professors.</p>
<p>mhmm–you are caught up in the prestige war. Look at posts here about Brown and how it is considered one of the easiest schools–yet has an “Ivy” standing. As for SAT scores being that much lower, give me a break. Kids will find challenge where ever they end up. As for being lucky, I don’t know that we are lucky. All of the schools around here are top notch, mainly because we live in a highly educated area, people care about getting a good education and we don’t need to spend $50,000/year on kindergarten to get that. </p>
<p>Our son is very intellectually curious and extremely smart-national math test finalist smart. He doesn’t have a single so called top ten school on his list. All of the schools he applied to have his major and I can bet you have never heard of any of them, however, in the past 5 years, EVERY SINGLE graduate in his program had jobs lined up before graduation. WHY would he pick a “top” school when he doesn’t have to. That is just stupid.</p>
<p>Sorry, but you have a typical east coast attitude when it comes to selecting colleges. Feel free to continue on that path and the rest of us will continue to know better and let our kids attend schools where not only do they get substantial merit aid automatically, they also qualify for other scholarships making the cost of their educations next to nothing. We are a full pay family (times 2 kids going off to college next year), I’m fully aware of how financial aid works. We are not planning on getting any financial aid either, we, however, have encouraged our kids to do well in school and find places they can afford to attend. DS narrowed down his list to 12 schools, DD to 9. They had well over 30 choices to start with, none of which you would consider worthy however. They, however, are thrilled with their options and have very, very bright outlooks for their intended careers thank you very much.</p>
<p>I feel like I post the same thing over and over again in CC, but here goes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe extremely rare in NYC, but not so rare in other parts of the country. My D and her graduating friends from a not-well-known school (school D, maybe, out of A-F?) out here in flyover country all had well-paying jobs lined up before graduation. Granted, it’s an N of 10 or 12, so we’re not talking a large sample size, but still…</p>
<p>So much depends on major, GPA, and job experience.</p>
<p>Well SteveMA thank you for setting me on the righteous path with my east coast attitude. I guess you are right and I am wrong, and kids with sat scores of 2200 and up with high gpas out of schools such as Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech are no smarter than kids with sat scores of 1500 and will find a level intellectual field in classes together. Forgive me for having an attitude of disbelief there. As to my being caught up with prestige… huh? Where did I indicate that? I strongly believe in Binghamton and some other SUNYs as well as the honors programs at the CUNYs.
And in terms of jobs being lined up - "Over the last year, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent for college graduates under age 25. Meanwhile, researchers at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute found that more than 19 percent of grads in that age group are underemployed — working part time when they would prefer full-time jobs. – the former are gov’t numbers. Forgive me if I think its rare to have jobs lined up.</p>
<p>Are there really any four-year colleges out there with majors in basket weaving? Some posters seem to think that there are plenty of them.</p>
<p>It is always appropriate to question and challenge the way the government and public colleges spend taxpayer money; doing so has nothing to do with one’s charitable values.</p>
<p>scout59–same here, also in flyover country. I don’t know of any recent grad that did not get a job in their field within a reasonable time of graduation. Some kids did travel the summer after graduation and started looking in August but were employed by October, others had jobs lined up before they graduated and everything inbetween. I take that back, I know of one kid that doesn’t have a job but according to his parents, he hasn’t applied for any either. When you limit your sample to private school kids from one school in New York with aspirations of only working on Wall Street though, your experience is going to be vastly different.</p>
<p>^^“When you limit your sample to private school kids from one school in New York with aspirations of only working on Wall Street though, your experience is going to be vastly different.”’ – very true. Would love to see the poster who does that though.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, not “naturally.” I don’t spend any of my time resenting people who a) have less than me (and get some kind of “break” for it) or people who b) have more than me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And, of course, Wall Street jobs are the only jobs that employ people in NYC. Nope, no other industry there besides finance.</p>
<p>I think many people seriously misunderstand how much need based financial aid is awarded at most institutions to very low incomes families.</p>
<p>If you look at the Integrated Post Secondary Education Data base, you can get an idea of the net price of an institution for families by income ranges.</p>
<p>Here’s a sampling of state flagships across the country:</p>
<p>For UArizona, families with 0-30K income, the net price about 8K, familes with over 110K, the net price is 18K
For UAlabama, 0-30K, net price 14K, over 110K, net price 20K
For UCB, 0-30K, 8K, over 110K, net price 28K
For UConn, 0-30K net price is 7K, over 110K, net price 22K</p>
<p>The UAlabama one is very surprising.</p>
<p>Do you really think that families of modest means have it easy when it comes to paying for college?</p>
<p>Is the above really ‘socialist income redistribution’!</p>
<p>C’mon. Look at facts, not anecdotes about your neighbor and what they say they’re paying for college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because obviously poor people don’t work hard?? I’ve held various jobs in my life, and the one where I worked the hardest (twelve hour days, no exaggeration) was the one that paid the least. Every day I see people who work hard and are low-income. Let me tell you from experience, it’s extremely stressful knowing you’re one disaster (medical emergency, car breakdown, and so on) from financial ruin.</p>