Dear colleges, You have priced the middle/upper of the middle class out, so...

Parents Forum
541

<p>"It seems some people think having money or making a large salary indicates a character flaw.
…</p>

<p>I just wonder why it is okay to bash the financially fortunate? No whining here, just curious. "</p>

<p>I do not dislike the financially fortunate. Some of my best friends are financially fortunate :). In fact I aspire to move at least a few steps in that direction myself.
Right now, I am discussing a possible promotion, and DW (now that DD is out of the house and time no longer needs to be spent on her k-12 issues) increasing her work hours. If I do not get the promotion, I will be looking into a possible second job. </p>

<p>And I have examined FAFSA rules, and income taxes, and from all I can tell, having more income will leave us BETTER OFF AFTER taxed and need based FA. Enough better off to leave me incented to pursue those options. </p>

<p>So when I hear folks saying that a higher income makes you WORSE off, that kind of gets my goat. AFAICT, in general, ceteris parabis, a family with a lower income will STILL have less money for non-college expenditures than a higher income family, all along the income scale despite BOTH the scaling of need based FA AND income taxes. The impression one gets is that this is based on a belief, sometimes stated, usually only strongly implied, that those lower income families OUGHT to have less money after taxes and after Cost of Attendance, cause they do not work as hard, etc. Folks with incomes of 190k insisting folks with incomes of 60k can more easily afford college even though after taxes and COA they still have more $$ left than the family of 60k does. Because, you know, they can’t really be expected to live like a family with 60k does.</p>

542

<p>Well, see…I DO think that someone who made career choices that paid off would be expected to be able to live better than someone who didn’t. That’s just life. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Which is also why I believe that the KID (not the parents) who achieves like crazy deserves the Tier 1 opportunity whether or not their parents are paying for it.</p>

543

<p>"And yet, having told me that we “did something wrong” you are apparently unwilling to pontificate on exactly what that might be…I haven’t seen people here denigrating your choices. "</p>

<p>but I HAVE seen people here implying that those with lower incomes worked less hard, and putting forth the canard that its easier to afford the top schools as you go lower on the income scale. </p>

<p>See below</p>

<p>“Two, college isn’t like other large consumer products in that income alone doesn’t dictate what you can purchase. So people both above and below us on the economic scale may be able to get their deserving kids into the top schools, while we, who may have worked just as hard or harder, cannot.”</p>

544

<p>"I DO think that someone who made career choices that paid off would be expected to be able to live better than someone who didn’t. That’s just life. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. "</p>

<p>Its not just life, its a choice we make about how to structure our society. People end up with higher incomes sometimes because they are lucky in their choices, or lucky in their talents, or lucky in their absence of mental illness, or whatever. To me that gives no ethical entitlement. I would like more equality of income in so far as that is possible, without handicapping the economy. I am economically realistic and realize that at some level too progressive a tax system would handicap the economy, and I am politically realistic, and I realize that even that level of egalitarianism is unlikely in this country.</p>

<p>Universities, largely for reasons of their own interests in pricing their products and attracting the student bodies they want, have created for parents of college bound youngsters a situation that is SOMEWHAT closer to an equality of outcome ideal than the rest of our society has. I see a high degree of resentment against that by high income families. Rarely stated outright though, for whatever reason. I suppose its far easier to argue for income inequality in the abstract, than to say to someone’s face (even online) that they deserve to have less than the speaker does. Especially when they can recite for you exactly how they ended up with a lower income.</p>

545

<p>

But haven’t you yourself been saying that you’re lucky your son will have an excellent, affordable choice like Miami? Why the emphasis on whether or not a school is “Tier 1”? Tier 1 according to whom, or what? If Miami is a Tier 1 school, then it’s all good. The kid who achieves like crazy gets the opportunity whether the parents pay for it or not. It’s only if you believe that full-price private schools are intrinsically superior because they confer automatic lifetime success that it matters whether your kid is at one or not.</p>

<p>Face it. Some people are always going to think that private schools are superior. Some people are always going to believe that their child is more successful than yours if theirs goes to a top 10 school and yours “only” goes to a top 50 school. Some people look down on state school window decals. Really, so what? That can only bother you if you agree to let it. It doesn’t mean that the entire finaid system should be overhauled, or that private full-pay schools aren’t worth the money.</p>

<p>Really, there’s enough room at this table for everybody.</p>

546

<p>Well said, frazzled. </p>

<p>I agree that there does seem to be some talking out of both sides of some folks’ mouths. If state schools and/or honors programs are all they are being touted to be (and may well be), then why the need to claim that a strong student deserves a tier 1 education (whatever that is these days, since the US News now has almost 200 schools at that level) at someones, anyones expense. There seems (to me) to be an implication that tier 1= top 20 in some of the conversations. But who knows. There is a lot of assuming going on around here.</p>

547

<p>Sylvan…The board is full of people who claim that they are paying for kids on financial aid. I see it all the time on CC. Do you deny that?</p>

<p>I just turned the tables on that attitude because most people would’nt do it. You see those of us that need the financial aid are not proud of that. It is not because we did’nt work hard to be like you or some of the others. It is because life happens sometimes and we need to reinvent ourselves at an age where we did’nt expect to. Some people who receive aid actually are poor. Imagine those folks having the nerve to have smart kids that could go to a school outside of community college. (obvious sarcasm)</p>

548

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<p>Butbutbut achieving like crazy is an outcome, and all kids don’t necessarily have equal opportunity to achieve at crazy levels.</p>

549

<p>I didn’t realize how the stark the choices would be until the packages started coming in for my daughters. Then it became clear. COA would be 50K or more at school A, 30K at school B. No aid at all at one “need only” school, 15K in aid at another “need only” school.</p>

<p>Perhaps, when rejecting the particular schools, we could enclose a letter that says something like: “While your school has many admirable qualities, we find that we are not willing, as parents and as a prospective student, to commit financial suicide in order to attend. Child will attend an equivalent school, just as good as yours, but with a philosophic difference that enables us not to be strangled in our own bad, yet hopeful, choices”. </p>

<p>Would they get the message?</p>

550

<p>“Would they get the message”</p>

<p>they dont need it. </p>

<p>Quoth ad con at school X (when DD was already admitted, and weighing school X vs school Y) “With her numbers and being a female, school Y will give her $_____. We won’t buy her” He was right on the money about the offer from school Y. She ended up going to school Y. I am pretty sure the adcon (who spent a lot of time with us) regretted that she didnt go to his school. But school X had made a conscious decision about how to spend their resources, and was able to get a (somewhat wealthier) student body that met their strategic goals without the level of need and merit aid at the other school. </p>

<p>Its not personal. Bidness is bidness, so to speak.</p>

551

<p>

I’m not seeing how that statement implies either of those things. It is true for us, as it apparently is for at least some others here, that we have an EFC that we can’t realistically afford. Since it is clearly true that there are people both above and below us on the economic ladder who manage to “afford” theirs, and that we work as hard or harder than they do (which is not a suggestion that they are lazy, just the truth), it follows that income alone doesn’t dictate what they can purchase in terms of college, and that financial aid policies have made it possible for some who are less well off to afford what we can’t. Just a fact.</p>

552

<p>

I have never suggested that. In fact, the reality is that we are paying for the kids at the STATE schools, by virtue of our taxes. Still waiting for you to tell us where it was that we went so wrong.</p>

553

<p>553</p>

<p>well for one without looking at what you have decided you can afford to give up, and what those lower on the income ladder do without, its not clear that you can afford less than they can based on the choices you have made.</p>

<p>Second, its not clear what “financial aid policies have made it possible for some who are less well off to afford what we can’t” means.</p>

<p>There are aspects of financial aid policies that differentially impact people without necessarily being about giving need based aid to lower income people per se. For example the FA process usually does not take into account COL in your metro area. There are other special circumstances that it does not reflect. If that is your point, I agree with you. Whether adjusting for the special circumstances would make the system fairer, or is feasible, is something that can be debated. But those issues impact people up and down the income scale. </p>

<p>But what I read you as saying, and I dont think my reading is a stretch, is that the FA system makes it easier all other things being equal for someone with a lower income to attend than someone with a higher income. I think that is a canard, because, as I recall, it has been demonstrated here multiple times that a higher income family compared to a similar family (same number of kids, same metro area, etc) will have more $$ left after paying for college than a lower income family under standard EFC calculations. </p>

<p>As for the other point - worked just as hard or harder is, shall we say, kind of cherry picking. Worked just as hard, or harder, or less hard, would exhaust the full range of possibilities better, I think :)</p>

554

<p>554 </p>

<p>for an explicit statement that the full pays are subsidizing need based FA, see post 423. It seems that no one else supported that explicitly, but it seems from what some posted in response to my extended debate with the poster of 423, that others believe it.</p>

555

<p>My penny or twenty…</p>

<p>1) “Middle class” is a nebulous term and a contentious debate in its own right. IMHO, using it, undefined, is an exercise in the absurd.</p>

<p>2) Government EFC calculations don’t factor in children not yet in college, but <em>parent</em> calculations must. I know and understand why our governmental formula doesn’t factor this, and I’m not arguing that it should. Just saying it doesn’t.</p>

<p>3) Access to higher ed is, always has been, and I expect always will be a discussion about public policy, hence a political debate. Contentiousness usually increases in direct proportion to the diversity of the discussants. :-)</p>

<p>4) In the U.S., public policy is set by our <em>collective</em> citizenry. If there’s a public policy that mirrors the needs and desires of each citizen individually, I’m not aware of it. I personally believe that the educational attainment of our “collective citizenry” impacts our public policies. Currently, I believe only some 30% of our “collective citizenry” aged 25 & over holds at least a bachelor’s degree. I strongly urge every individual within that 30% to show up at the polls.</p>

<p>5) I think this thread has confused two different, although related, matters of public policy, namely:
a) access to higher education, which we address primarily by providing tax-funded colleges & universities as well as tax-funded grants and loans;
b) access to private institutions of higher education, which we address primarily by allowing tax-funded grants and loans to be applied towards the cost of attending private institutions.
To the best of my knowledge, our public policy does not regulate the prices charged by private institutions.</p>

<p>6) Ours is a capitalistic economy dependent upon consumer purchasing power. Debt impedes purchasing power. In my opinion, our national policy of enabling, and I’d even argue “encouraging,” the incurrence of substantial personal debt to pursue higher ed is likely to bite our collective national backside.</p>

556

<h1>557</h1>

<p>afaict the debate is largely about need based grants in aid (not Pell Grants) at private institutions, which grants are entirely at the discretion of said private institutions. Its not really a public policy debate at all, though many of the claims about “fairness” are borrowed from public policy debates.</p>

557

<p>“Ours is a capitalistic economy dependent upon consumer purchasing power. Debt impedes purchasing power.”</p>

<p>The way I would put it is “household consumption is a function of net worth (among other things)” Debt that leads to a purchase of an asset does not decrease net worth (hard to remember that when we are coming off several years of falling asset prices such that debtors ARE losing net worth.) In the case of education the question is whether the human capital gains (not counted in net worth, but impacting household income) offset the value of education debt, and if so, over what time horizon. That likely to be different for different household/labor market participants, and the result in aggregate is not obvious.</p>

<p>IMHO, though, the worst tradeoff is the taking out of debt for CERTAIN for profit private colleges, esp ones with very low rates of graduation. I doubt that the debt taken out for the elite non profit privates being discussed here is going to have any significant impact on the overall economy.</p>

558

<p>When we realized that our daughter was not making the most of her private LAC we decided against having her attend. Parents need to weigh how a specific school may impact their childs life. Our daughter is doing fine academically at the state school and we are not incurring the debt that we were initially for her school which seemed to ignore that we had three others in college. Daughters first school made their decision and after her first difficult year we made our decision. It is all about choices and what is good for the individual student.</p>

559

<p>

So true, Slithey Tove. It’s harder to stand out in the applicant pool when you haven’t attended blue ribbon schools all your life or been able to go to sports camp every summer or done ballet summer intensives for the past 6 years. Those things cost money, and middle-middle or lower-middle income families have to put food on the table and pay for taxes, health insurance and a mortgage first. Yes, we all have those expenses; it’s fortunate when there’s enough left over to pay for learning experiences, too. Many people can’t; many people don’t even know these things exist. </p>

<p>I would rather deal with the challenge of how to pay the full cost of my child’s education when college is on the horizon than have dealt with the many financial challenges inherent in having a lower income throughout my child’s entire life. I would rather live in a country where lower income kids have a chance, albeit a small one, of receiving a great education at a selective school than in one where those kids know they might as well not even apply because their family absolutely can’t pay for it. And I don’t mean that they can’t remortgage or borrow against their retirement or take on big loans as retirement looms, all of which suck but at least are still options. I mean because there wasn’t enough money to pay the utility bill last month.</p>

560

<p>My neighbor teaches cello. She is a gifted cello teacher. But I recently helped her make a spreadsheet to show her that no matter how hard she works at teaching cello, she can’t pay her real estate taxes and the heating oil for the house she fought so hard to keep in her divorce. There are only 24 hours in a day and only a finite number of people who want private music lessons in commuting range. And if she doubles her rates, none of them will want to take lessons with her; and at her current rate, she’s digging a financial hole faster than she can tighten her bow. But of course if she sells the house she’s netting much less than they paid for it so why not stay and hope the market gets better all the while digging a deeper hole and working harder.</p>

<p>I’m sure we all work hard. But the financial aid folks at Emory or BU or Fordham aren’t making a value judgment about how hard you work when they award aid. And I think that lots of us would be a lot less frustrated with the system if we’d remember that. And for gods sake, stop whining about how hard you work. People who earn double what you earn work hard; people who earn half what you do work hard; it ain’t about how hard you work.</p>

<p>My neighbor doesn’t understand (yet) that working harder is not going to net her the ability to stay in her house. It doesn’t make her lazy, it doesn’t mean she’s not a nice person. It does mean that she was woefully unprepared to be head of household after her divorce; it probably means she was short-sighted when she opted for a career which allowed her plenty of flexibility to be home with her kids after school vs. a job with benefits and a pension. And I suspect many of the people who get frustrated with college costs, financial aid and “you can’t get there from here” kind of math made early career decisions which seemed benign 15 years ago, and now seem to loom large in the mind. (it is hard going back in the work force after a long absence. even if you want to “work hard”. It seems easy to turn down a promotion at work if it means monthly trips to Dayton Ohio when you’ve got a toddler at home. When that toddler is a high school senior and you haven’t had a raise in 8 years you sort of wonder what might have been.)</p>

<p>Choices have consequences.</p>