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

<p>SAY, this is why I was extremely proud of one of my sons. He crossed off several well-known schools from his list because he felt they weren’t worth the $$ and that the flagship would be a better deal. I appreciated his respect for our finances.</p>

<p>Haven’t you ever wondered why Gettysburg College costs the same as Williams or De Paul the same as Yale?</p>

<p>no I havent
those schools dont have endowments of the same depth, so their expenses are not as spread out.</p>

<p>And there are many schools that <em>are</em> less expensive even if the majority are very close in price to each other.</p>

<p>And there are merit awards if a really good student goes down a tier.</p>

<p>Emeraldkity do you work for a university? You don’t think the price should be different for a top 5 school with admit rate of 10% and a graduation rate of 95% verus the 100th ranked school with an 85% admit rate and a graduation rate below 50%. Would you happily pay the same for a Holiday Inn as the Four Seasons or a Lexus versus a Chevy? It’s not surprising that Yale is expensive but it’s downright criminal for Beloit to cost the same. Everyone on this tread and the entire country should be outraged and demanding an investigation.</p>

<p>The point is that the schools have all colluded together(legally) to fix the price of most colleges so that the normal rules about supply and demand don’t apply.</p>

<p>“minimal work hours”</p>

<p>mythmom, isn’t this about the furthest-from-the-truth comment made in this thread?</p>

<p>I don’t work @ a university & neither my H or I has ever attended a 4yr school.</p>

<p>We paid our EFC for both of the schools our children attend/ed.
If that was good enough for us, why would we think it wasn’t good enough for other families?</p>

<p>vossron are you really going to claim that the teaching load at a top school is particularly rigorous. I’ve known a lot of professors and very little of their time is spent teaching undergraduates according to them.</p>

<p>This thread is very humorous to me. As a 36 year old non traditional student i guess maybe i just have a different point of view. I came from a poor background as a child with a mother who was a teacher and a father who was an actuary. They were in no position to help me pay for college making a little over $80k together in the early 90’s so I went and got a job.</p>

<p>I payed for my own college working at as a car stereo installer and window tinter for a few years but decided that it was not for me. So i bought my own shop and sold stereos and tinted windows for the last 12 years and now i am not only in a position to go back to college for personal fulfillment, but also i can just write a check and not worry about tuition.</p>

<p>There are many roads to paying for things, as a business owner college itself is actually a pretty good deal when one looks at all of the costs associated with running one. </p>

<p>If parents can not pay for a students school, there are many ways for the student to do it themselves. Waiting till the age of 24 (when the student can file for financial aid by themselves) and gaining some valuable work experience as well as trying out several different career paths is a great alternative path. Join the military, as a person who has employed many people who were in the military i realize that though it does not provide one with a marketable job skill, it does help with character and responsibility. How about the Peace Corp? It is absolutely a wonderful program and one that both my wife and myself will be volunteering for when I retire in 15 years. Lastly start a business, I did and i cant tell you how much it has helped. I have learned more in my 12 years of being a business owner than any Ivy League business school could ever hope to teach. In addition i am financially in a position to go to any school in the nation and not worry about how much it costs.</p>

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Can you elaborate on this?</p>

<p>@vossron: Indeed. I had twelve hour day grading marathons this past weekend and actually was perturbed about the time I spent entertaining my favorite (and only) daughter home from law school for part of the weekend. Sad.</p>

<p>Our daughter graduated from one of the PhD prep undergrad schools and doesn’t want to be a prof because of how hard they have to work.</p>

<p>mythmom are you going to argue that top professors at the top colleges that are being discussed on CC typically spend 12 hrs on weekends grading papers. The most famous of these profs at many school barely teach at all. This is not a secret. Sure the lower level non-tenured “teachers” work much harder but then no one is going to the school because of them. </p>

<p>[Is</a> college a waste of money? Two prominent professors say ‘yes’](<a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/07/30/2010-07-30_is_college_a_waste_of_money_two_prominent_researchers_say_yes.html]Is”>http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/07/30/2010-07-30_is_college_a_waste_of_money_two_prominent_researchers_say_yes.html)</p>

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<p>This is only true for the handful of schools that cover full need without any loans. If your children end up at schools that gap their financial aid, or that use loans in their FA packages–which is to say most schools–then having more income is to your advantage.</p>

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<p>Again: this only applies for a few schools, and even for the most generous you are looking at needing to keep your household income below $200k. If you are willing to bet that your child will snag a place at one of the few uber-selective schools that offer lots of FA, then by all means have one of the parents stay home when you’re not off jetting around the world stocking up on interesting knick-knacks. If you bet wrong and your kid ends up at some other school, then you’re still going to need to shell out full-pay bucks in the form of loans.</p>

<p>vossron then she is going to be in for a rude surprise. Everyone and I mean everyone works hard to make a good living. The media is filled with stories about over paid CEOs, sports stars, and media figures but almost every successful person has worked very hard. The problem with the younger generation is that they have been led to believe that getting into a “quality” college guarantees them a ticket to the top. In truth getting into college is the second inning in life and most of the hard work still lies ahead. Hopefully your daughter will figure this out sooner rather than later.</p>

<p>Slithey Tove this site mainly consists of discussions of exactly those schools. Why on earth do you need a college admission site to discuss colleges with admit rates of 75%. Even a good school like the U of Michigan admits over 50% of the applicants. But my real point is that the cost of a college education is not related to the quality of the school. As I said the 50th ranked private school is nearly the same price as the top ten.</p>

<p>@SAY: All my friends in academics work hard. The only really close friend I have at an elite institution is at Brown and she works very hard, too.</p>

<p>I don’t want to disagree too vehemently because this isn’t my life, and I don’t have the goods to back up any opinions I might have.</p>

<p>I wasn’t speaking directly to your point but rather to vossron.</p>

<p>I <em>will</em> say that close friends were both in the linguistics department of a big research uni. Both spent an inordinate amount of time applying for grants just to keep their department going. They were in their offices 9 - 5 over summers. </p>

<p>It is a time consuming occupation. It is also my life, and a true calling for me, so I am not really complaining.</p>

<p>And yes, it’s true, short of a civil service job with strict 9 - 5 hours (and relatively good pay) most professions, or even jobs, are very demanding.</p>

<p>I have made good friends with the guy who pumps my gas and he works seven days a week, and is off only on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. He is an immigrant and grateful for work to support his family. But sheesh!</p>

<p>mythmom I agree with most of what you said and I’m not trying to be difficult. But in your last post you come very close to making my overall point about colleges and the cost of teaching undergraduates. These grants have absolutely nothing to do with teaching. Universities perform many functions today with vastly different purposes and most of these purposes have little to do with undergraduate education. Having said all this I had the privilege of attending three high ranking schools all in the top 25 and one an ivy and received a fine education. But the ever escalating cost of these schools simply can not be sustained much longer.</p>

<p>SAY, there are only three or four schools that offer significant need-based financial aid to families with incomes extending up towards $200k. There’s a great deal of CC discussion about those four schools, but CC doesn’t consist “mainly” of discussion about them. </p>

<p>[Here we draw a line __________ because everything discussed below this line falls in the category of “better to keep the wife working at her $100k a year job because we’re sure as heck going to need that in order to afford college for our young 'uns”. ]</p>

<p>There are maybe a few dozen schools at most that offer to meet full financial need without resorting to loans. None of these schools have acceptance rates anywhere near 50%, let alone 75%. Their acceptance rates start around 25% and then drop down much lower. </p>

<p>[One more line _________________________ as we descend into the category of “abandon hope, all ye who have low EFCs or no college savings, because unless you manage to get lots of merit aid, you’re going to be taking out a ton of loans to afford us” schools]</p>

<p>Next, there are the schools that guarantee to meet full need, but which include loans. You’d know about Northwestern, which meets this criteria. Last I looked, their admission rate was way below 50%. </p>

<p>Then there are the vast majority of schools that guarantee exactly nothing. Some of these have high admission rates, but some of them are far more selective. </p>

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<p>Conversely, some fantastic public schools are a much better deal than privates. And some privates which award a lot of merit aid are a better deal than some publics. This isn’t news to anyone who’s been reading CC for awhile. </p>

<p>Actually, I’m not sure what your real point is. You keep moving from point to point with every post. The only thing that’s clear is that you’re mad as heck about something.</p>

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I love it! Well said!
I’ll take small classes taught by full professors, please! :-)</p>