College gifts hit record highs: When is enough going to be enough for Harvard?

Parents Forum
41

@prospect1, correlation is not causation. CC students are less likely to earn 4-year degrees because

  1. Many are not aiming for that.
  2. On average, it’s a less talented, less motivated, poorer student body.

That doesn’t mean that a kid who is smart enough and motivated enough to get in to his/her flagship would face poorer odds by starting out in a CC, however.

Also, no, you don’t need to be an awesome student to be merit money at some colleges. Plus, in-state publics (especially those within commuting distance) are an option for most middle class families. So is starting out at a CC. In fact, those 2 ways are how most people go to college. “Shopping around” for a sleepaway college is a luxury good which, yes, some middle class families can not afford.

42

As for what it means for most Americans, I think that what we’ll see in the future is the first 2 years being covered by CC or online for most Americans (you don’t need a ton of equipment to teach intro courses), followed by the last 2 years at a university or commutable college.

BTW, many public flagships are among the top schools in many of the STEM fields and have labs that rival any university in the world. I read on CC about a visiting Oxford professor who was blown away by the equipment that an engineering department at UT-Austin had. While some posters on CC were skeptical about that anecdote (but, but, Oxbridge is so much more prestigious than UT-Austin!), I was not, since Oxbridge are public universities who were (until recently) poorly funded (poorly funded because until recently, tuition for the natives to attend was almost zero) while the UofTexas system has one of the largest endowments in the world (thanks to oil money).

43

If you look at tuition over time at the high endownment colleges that have been the focus of this thread, average cost after FA per student usually roughly follows inflation. Sticker price has increased faster than inflation, but average cost after FA has not. In short, the colleges are taking in the same amount of inflation adjusted tuition across the full student body (after FA) as they did in the past, but they are distributing the cost across the student body differently than they did in the past. At HYPSM type colleges, it’s common for families with incomes of under $100k to have no tuition expense, and families with incomes of under $65k to have an effective full ride. Even families with $200k incomes can pay well under sticker price with FA. The higher sticker price for high income families compensates for the reduced tuition for lower income families and many middle income families (depending on how you define “middle income”).

44

@Data10, average net tuition costs across all 4-year colleges have increased at a rate above inflation, though (though not by as much as the sticker price inflation rate). However, that could be due to state expenditures on their publics not keeping up with inflation, so publics rely on tuition for funding to a far greater degree than 2-3 decades ago.

45

@prospect1 It is even more extreme than the top 1% having 50% of the endowment, but it’s pretty close. It depends on if you consider the number of institutions to be 2,000 or 6,000. Correction, however, the article only considered 828 schools.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2014/07/30/22-richest-schools-in-america/

46

I don’t have time now to look up the citations, but there are a few actual, real world case studies of colleges which plonked along barely filling their freshman classes until they raised their prices to the level of the rest of their peer institutions. Essentially, they were being penalized for running a low cost alternative. The “market” thought they were a higher quality institution once they raised their prices.

This is not about me not caring about higher ed (I’ve been on this site for years- clearly I care). This isn’t about me being an elitist. This is about living in a nation of consumers where the quality of the workout rooms and the 24/7 coffee bars and the libraries open all the time is expected. Not a nice amenity- but expected. People post here all the time after touring a college where the daffodils were droopy and there was only one vegan entree option in the dining room and insisting that their kid could never attend a college with sub-par landscaping and food options.

Like most of you, I attended college back in the 70’s. Libraries closed at 10 pm except for during finals when they stayed open until midnight. We made coffee in our rooms with little immersion heaters and Maxwell House after the dining hall closed. Career services was a room with a big black binder filled with out of date job listings and a clerk at a counter who maintained “the book”. Only athletes used the gyms, except for your mandatory PE class where you brought your own towel.

You guys all want your kids to go to a college like this, right?

I find the arms race crazy. But blaming Harvard is the easy way out (Harvard influences what percentage of kids in college in America at any one time?) The hard thing to do is to look ourselves in the eye- we want services for our kids with LD’s, and we want shrinks on call in the health clinic for our daughters with anorexia and our sons with an anxiety disorder and we want a team of nutritionists at the various dining halls for our kids with gluten sensitivities. Kids with chronic medical issues didn’t go far away to college “back in the day”- they lived at home and their parents helped them navigate while they commuted. But we don’t want little Susie missing out on the SMU experience just because her medical team is a couple hundred miles away. So colleges need to staff up- and staff up quickly- to handle the wide range of issues that come their way.

On any given week on CC there is a parent complaining that they called a Dean and it took two days to get the call returned. On any given week on CC there is a parent complaining that their kid is on a waiting list or got shutout of the seminar he/she needs for his major, and why the heck doesn’t the college just schedule more sections. On any given week there is a parent grinding their teeth that their kid was referred to a specialist or hospital in town because the college health clinic didn’t have a clinician who deals with X at the very moment that their kid presented with X.

Harvard isn’t the enemy. We’re the enemy. And the problem won’t go away until we all take a collective step backwards and ask, “Is this necessary?”

How many of you had air conditioning in your dorm in college (for that matter, did you have it at home growing up?) Who remembers standing on line for a pay phone on Sunday to call home for five minutes?

We all either swallow hard and accept that those days are gone and are not coming back (my own alma mater has spent god knows how many millions taking 19th century buildings and retrofitting them with modern telecom/IT/infrastructure. Surely cheaper to knock them down and start again…) or we work hard to find cost effective ways of getting a good education.

But $%^&ing about Harvard is surely not helpful.

47

Average inflation adjusted net cost remaining relatively stable is not exactly big news. Even the NYT has written about this, such as the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/upshot/amherst-college-and-financial-aid.html?rref=upshot&_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0 about Amherst.

The same is true for numerous other colleges with excellent FA. I’ll use Stanford as an example since in another thread I looked at the average net cost per student at Stanford during the period for which CDS is available, in inflation adjusted 2013 dollars. Note that there is less than a $100 difference between the average net cost in 1999 and 2013.

1999 – $31,700
2000 – $30,400
2001 – $32,800
2002 – $33,100
2003 – $30,600
2004 – $31,400
2005 – $32,700
2006 – $32,600
2007 – $33,100
2008 – $31,900
2009 – $29,300 (large increase in financial aid this year, likely due to new policy)
2010 – $29,200 (still abnormally low average cost)
2011 – $29,700 (still abnormally low average cost)
2012 – $30,400
2013 – $31,700 (finally recovering from 2009 FA increase and returning to normal level)

48

I don’t understand this thread. At all. Maybe someone can help me understand it.

We don’t send our kids to top schools because they have posh student facilities. In fact, I’ve seen posters here on CC complaining about how old the dorms are at schools that dare to charge high tuition. I believe it was washrooms used by American greats of a hundred years ago (and they looked like it). We send them there to get a great education.

I’m not aware of dormtop helipads at Stanford and organizations do a brisk business at Harvard renting…fans because the dorms are alternately too hot and too cold. Stanford routinely expends less than 3/4 of it’s building budget and then it’s mostly on facilities for research.

Mostly, what I’ve seen is lesser quality institutions apparently trying to compete for students by offering the fancy new living arrangements with all the amenities that upper middle class students seem to value…or expect. Such facilities figure highly in the marketing efforts. They are quite impressive.

Maybe it’s just a case of misplaced priorities.

49

@Data10, you don’t believe that Amherst, Stanford, and other colleges with excellent FA are good stand-ins for 4-year colleges in general, do you?

I thought I was pretty clear that I was referring to average net tuition costs across all 4-year colleges. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have referenced publics.

50

My earlier post that you replied to stated “If you look at tuition over time at the high endowment colleges that have been the focus of this thread,” I thought I was pretty clear that I was referring to high endowment/donation colleges. Obviously all colleges in the world do not share the financial characteristics of Stanford, Amherst, and various other colleges with excellent FA, but this thread isn’t about all colleges in the world – it’s about colleges with extremely large endowments and donations, such as Harvard and Stanford. Harvard has had a relatively stable inflation adjusted average net cost during the period for which CDS data is available like Stanford, Amherst, and others in this group.

51

“We don’t send our kids to top schools because they have posh student facilities. In fact, I’ve seen posters here on CC complaining about how old the dorms are at schools that dare to charge high tuition. I believe it was washrooms used by American greats of a hundred years ago (and they looked like it). We send them there to get a great education.”

Agree. My nephew at Princeton - his bathroom wasn’t even on the same floor as his room. My kid at Northwestern has had absolutely teeny-tiny, claustrophobia-inducing broom-closet dorm rooms. My kid at Wellesley lives in facilities that are gorgeous from the outside, but desperately need updating on the inside. If the elite schools are the ones installing posh student-life facilities, I’ve yet to see it. These aren’t the places with the climbing walls and the lazy rivers and so forth.

52

“I don’t have time now to look up the citations, but there are a few actual, real world case studies of colleges which plonked along barely filling their freshman classes until they raised their prices to the level of the rest of their peer institutions. Essentially, they were being penalized for running a low cost alternative. The “market” thought they were a higher quality institution once they raised their prices.”

That’s right. Families prefer the $60k sticker price with $30k “merit” discount to the $30k sticker price by a huge margin. This is the depressing result of a number of (1) real-life experiments and (2) projects by marketing consultants advising colleges. It’s something that comes up a lot in professional development conferences for people in admissions/enrollment.

I’m all for fighting insane tuition inflation, but IMHO Harvard/Stanford are the last targets I’d pick to attack, because their need-based financial aid has truly kept pace with the increase when no one else’s has.

53

"If Stanford builds a new $50 million dollar computer lab, then Berkeley has to build a $20 million computer lab, and then UMASS has to build a $1 million computer lab. It’s not fair to say, don’t participate in it, because every school is affected by it in some way. "

A very upper middle class sheltered view of the world. The majority of parents / students in this country make their decisions based on what’s nearby /easy driving distance, affordable and offers a major of interest, over and done. Relatively few people are interested in “the best” (engineering lab, etc) – good enough is good enough for most people. The actions of Harvard et al really aren’t meaningful to 90% of college bound students.

54

I think some of the Stanford dorms are really horrible.

Comparatively, University of Houston dorms which charge half as much seem like real housing.

55

That might be a little strong.

The mice seem to like some of them just fine.

56

Caltech got a 7.8 M donation. The money is promised to aero department, grad school fellowships, and outreach to HSs and developmental programs. I don’t think it included anything towards the Houses.

57

My S lives in one of the “gold coast” houses at Harvard. I’ve seen some shabby dorms, but this is a new low for me. The floor is linoleum that must have been installed sometime in the 1950s and is worn completely through in places. It’s spongy in other places and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone eventually falls through it. The steam radiators are peeling, the windows don’t shut properly and the paint on the sills is bubbling. When the water is first turned on in the shower, it runs brown. The air quality in the room is very poor because of the ancient woodwork and paint dust. And the heat has been going off entirely for at least one day a week this winter. And there are cockroaches…I make him leave his clothes outside when he comes home.

I think it’s shameful that the college won’t provide clean and reasonably modern living conditions for students. It takes them years to relocate and renovate the houses - an excessive time given their resources. I don’t think this particular house is even on the schedule yet.

58

@JustOneDad. I would say Harvard deals more with cockroaches and mice…whereas, Stanford deals more with ants…
I know most of the kids don’t go for the fine housing amenities…

59

Regarding Stanford dorms, there are a wide variety of different qualities. If you get a good draw number, you can get housing with the qualities you value. In my opinion, the grad housing is as a whole superior to the undergrad. Some are quite nice. For example, summaries of Schwab and Munger are at at http://web.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-bin/drupal/housing/?q=housing/schwab-residential-center and http://web.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-bin/drupal/housing/housing/munger-graduate-residences . Note that they have respectable sized rooms with nice furnishing, A/C, various amenities, etc. In contrast, the freshman housing is often among the worst with very small, basic, outdated rooms that have few amenities.

It’s been my experience that pests were only a problem when students did something to deserve it. For example, if you keep a lot of uneaten food lying around, you many have a problem with ants. If you keep dorm+room doors propped open throughout the day and live on the 1st floor, you may get a mouse. I even heard of one person in Toyon who had a problem with a squirrel in his room due to keeping the window open all day, which was next to the branch of a tree. There is a free campus service that deals with pests in rooms.

60

I think it is ridiculous that juniors are expected to share a tiny room just like freshmen because of the luck of the draw.

Conspiracy theory says the dorms are deliberately kept bad so they will spend more time at the 50 million dollar gym or is that the computer lab? :smiley: .