<p>It's very bad: The</a> Best Class Money Can Buy</p>
<p>Ineffective financial aid affects a lot of people. It's the poor and middle class that have the most trouble overcoming its setbacks.</p>
<p>What I truly can not stomach is when a poor non-traditional student transfers to a public university for a better career/life and their high tuition/low aid is used to subsidizing fancy freshman dorms and merit scholarships for rich students.</p>
<p>My D went to a university known for great financial aid and some of her friends were provided substantial finaid. What I found interesting is that it was those same persons who were always bad-mouthing the university--"The university is so rich, I don't know why it makes me pay for XXX!" Entitlement isn't only for the rich...</p>
<p>I don't see how it's a bad thing that students are questioning the expenditures of the institutions they support financially, socially, academically and in many other ways.
Colleges are equally dependent on students. It is to a college's benefit to involve their students and alumni.</p>
<p>Ok, so after reading the rest of this thread, I wasn't going to touch it with a ten-foot pole, because it had gone in the direction that it always goes...</p>
<p>Anyway, I did come back to stay this. Many students that I know at Stanford who are low income are in now way interested in more money or financial handouts, but we have had difficult social experiences because our classmates tend to lack sensitively. For proof of that please see the comments of the daily article from June in the opinion section entitled "An Issue of Class", I don't have the energy to rehash things here. Before anyone says, "Well this is just an online forum", I will point that my friends have said some pretty nasty things in person similar to those comments, and that you should read "low income classmate's" list of comments. </p>
<p>Additionally, there seems to be this idea that low-income students are living large on the amount of financial aid we are receiving. We are not. Yes, we do not have to pay for tuition and room and board, but all of us work to earn money to pay for other things, or earned outside scholarships to pay for the "self-help" portion of the bill. I think that someone wrote that during college he lived like a poor college student, well so do we. We are not running around failing to work or living the high life. If we have cars, we worked to get them (most of us don't have cars), our clothes are our own (some of mine I've had for four or more years), and during the summer and the time we are off campus when we no longer have access to the dining hall we are eating... well like we did when we were kids. Many of us contribute money back home, and even when we are not sending regular of the times that we are home, we are contributing to family (can't tell you how many bags of groceries I've bought, or dinners I've paid for). So, its not like we are just running around, with tons of money for free while the middle class gets screwed. And now Stanford has significant financial aid for the middle (and by the way, the median income in the US is 60,000, so if you make 200,000 then you are not middle class, if you make 100,000 you are upper middle class, and you will still get significant financial aid at the elites.)</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
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I have SUPREME empathy for the middle class average kids (and their families) who bear the brunt of taxes, mortgages, and ordinary expenses and then get insulted with a lot of crumbs in financial aid
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<p>While I too sympathize with the middle class, how can you imply through your attitude that they are worse off that low-income students? Guess what: those low-income students don’t even have houses to pay mortgage for; they must rent. Renting isn’t easy, either, since the tenants are subject to the whims of the owner; e.g. rising house costs jack up the rent—or the owner could raise the rent just because he’s greedy. Or you could be stuck in mass housing like apartments or cookie-cutter duplexes made of cardboard that are too expensive given their quality, and that’s still rented.</p>
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The very poor who are blessed with excellent genes and high intelligence (the schools actually have not much to do with it....its mostly genetic)
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<p>I have neither of those by nature. I worked hard. I think that’s the same for most low-income students at top colleges.</p>
<p>And I have difficulty believing that it’s genetic. (Why else would colleges take your parents’ education into account?)</p>
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Schools THROW money at them, so they are on their way.
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<p>Oh, of course—at the top ones. Funny thing, though: low-income students have the most difficulty getting into those, in comparison to their advantaged counterparts whom they’re competing against. But where else are the majority of low-income students going? To schools that give them even more loans than the middle class. Or worse, they don’t go to college at all.</p>
<p>I’ve seen this sort of argument all the time—it’s the middle-income students who get the worst, when the real losers in this game are the low-income students.</p>