<p>“You mean they’ll have to go to Georgetown or Tufts? Perish the thought. No, Cornell (ranked #15) OWES your daughter the same charity it gives a poor child. YOU are entitled to charity too. You’ve made your position very clear.”</p>
<p>I don’t think its a profound injustice that a kid has to go to Tufts instead of Cornell OTOH if a given college’s aid policies skew in such a way that its unaffordable for a particular range of the income spectrum, while other ranges above and below can still attend - I would think thats at least a marketing issue to them, and perhaps raises the question of whether their financial aid policies are doing what they are designed to achieve. I think that is why the Ivies able to afford it, have tried to shift enough resources to make it more affordable for middle and upper middle class. OTOH not every top tier (or well, any tier) school has those resources. I do not think its an easy choice they face, and I am not so quick to blame them - but I can see why it can be seen as a serious issue.</p>
<p>Where there IS some injustice - no adjustment for metro area cost of living Maybe they should adjust for that, I would support. But then that leads to questions about other issues of specific family costs. </p>
<p>Also, wrt to NYC, it would be more useful to look at the metro area.</p>
<p>So where should the schools get this money to increase fin aid along the upper end of the sliding scale?</p>
<p>Seems like the financial aid policies are designed to use a finite pool of money to help as many students as possible attend the college who otherwise could not go. If you can suggest a better way for them to distribute this finite pool of money, I’m all ears.</p>
<p>Please understand that many of us whose children receive generous need-based aid have EFCs to pay too. Ours may be a lot less than sticker price but it’s still a struggle. Medical expenses and copays take a bigger percentage bite out of income for middle class and working class people than they do upper-middle and up. The grass isn’t always greener, and it’s scary without a safety net.</p>
<p>No, I mean they would have to our state school. I really don’t quite get your statement about charity. What charity? What’s my position? This is not my issue or concern. No matter how Cornell moves it’s sliding scale, we wouldn’t not benefit from it.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Tufts cost just as much as Cornell and it’s not need blind?</p>
<p>Hanna, and robinsuesanders, you both misinterpreted what I wrote. Of course low-income people with children at or below college age need to be included in the data. I was referring to, as I made clear, singles w/o children and retirees who do not need to finance higher ed. It is not useful to include those ‘families’ when interpreting who is/not middle class when the topic is higher ed.</p>
<p>If you were referring to me with your comments about Tufts/Cornell, etc, you have me confused with someone else. My very high achieving son did not even apply to any Ivys, because they don’t offer merit aid.</p>
<p>“What the heck is this supposed to mean? You think that low income students don’t have to think about financing college?”</p>
<p>No, I think it was too suggest that many lower income families are younger, and do not yet have college age students. While the contingenicies of life make it different for any given family, overall, statistically speaking, there is an increase in income with age of head of household up to the “peak earning years” and the poster seems to be implying that A. families sending kids to college are in those peak years and B. That the income she specifies is close to the middle for that demographic group.</p>
<p>I am not sure if thats quite true, but I dont think she was simply saying poor people dont send their kids to college.</p>
<p>No—she’s simply trying to redefine “middle income” by restricting who <em>counts</em> in her calculuations.</p>
<p>It may be reasonable to “throw out” old people and the childless. But it is NOT reasonable to throw out “low income people who don’t have to figure out college expenses.”</p>
<p>“Seems like the financial aid policies are designed to use a finite pool of money to help as many students as possible attend the college who otherwise could not go.”</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that. I would just say its a dynamic problem, as tuition/income ratios change, family net worth changes with changes in housing and the stock market, etc, etc. I presume their is a recognition of the need to adjust financial aid policies each year (as well as financial aid vs other expenditures), and that some schools are probably better at that than others.</p>
<p>“But they are getting priced out of top 20s, which the lower income students are not.”</p>
<p>Other than griping here on CC are there any studies that actually show that higher income families are choosing to not attend the top privates at any higher rate than in the past? I suspect we could have heard that same gripe 20 years ago.</p>
<p>“You are right, you should not expect taxpayers of Michigan to subsidize your or my kid. At the same time, I should not be expected to subsidize other people’s kids (through levying significant taxes on my income), while not be able to receive any benefit for my kids. This is what bothers me - I end up paying both for my kids (through paying full sticker tuition) and for somebody else’s kids (through paying significant amount of income taxes every year).”</p>
<p>Everyone and their mother makes this complaint about everything. Don’t like it, shoot your governor, bomb the state legislature house and set fire to the state treasury. </p>
<p>My high school used to pay people full time to take notes for and push these disabled kids around. My taxes subsidized helped subsidize this probably 30K/year service to each of these kids, in addition to the cost of running the school. Nothing short of me cutting off my arms and legs would have allowed me to receive those benefits. </p>
<p>A local elementary school has a special “blacks only” program designed to promote education to those who take part. Regardless of my race, my tax dollars are paying for that, which is something my future kids would never be able to take part in, because their skin isn’t the right color. (If you’re wondering how the school can get away with this… They can’t. It was criticized for a field trip for only black students which it ran.)</p>
<p>Tax dollars are not allocated fairly. People generally don’t pretend they are allocated fairly. And subsidizing instate universities which allows residents of the state to go for a cheaper price is as close to fair as you can get if you subsidize any part of education at all.</p>
<p>It may be reasonable to “throw out” old people and the childless. But it is NOT reasonable to throw out “low income people who don’t have to figure out college expenses.” </p>
<p>that last phrase can be read one of two ways. </p>
<p>“those low income, who, out of all low income people, dont have to figure out college expenses, cause they are too young, too old, whatever)”</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>“low income people, who being low income, do not have to figure out college expenses”</p>
<p>English is like that, it has this kind of imprecision.</p>
<p>I am reading it differently from you.</p>
<p>Damn, I am glad i studied some liberal arts. Even though I neved DID study deconstructionism.</p>
<p>There are some excellent public schools in the country that are still affordable. Cal Poly SLO, for example, fees and books come to around $8000 for a year. The biggest additional expense is room and board, whether the student lives at home or at school.
I don’t think Berkeley is a fair example, as it’s considered an elite institution up there with Stanford and the other top tiers, considering their acceptance rates and distinguished faculty. </p>
<pre><code> We took out loans to send our kids to college, and we’ll be paying one off for several more years. We didn’t have to, as we could have told them to go where the money is, since they both received hefty merit aid to public colleges. It was a choice we made.
</code></pre>
<p>I know my son is going to school with a lot of middle class kids who received rather generous financial aid at Pomona. I’m sure some of them also had to take out loans in spite of the aid in order to really afford it without changing lifestyles. These same kids probably also had merit scholarships from places like Long Beach and UC Santa Barbara, as my son did, but chose Pomona even though they had to take out loans to do it.<br>
I also know kids who were offered full tuition at USC and chose to take out loans to go to Princeton or Amherst.<br>
I think there are a lot of affordable, excellent options for the middle class in this country if you happen to live in a state with excellent public schools, or if your child is a top student. Yes, you may have some loans for a few years. But we take out loans for cars and homes, why not college?</p>
<p>I used top 20s because most of them are need blind and only offer need based aid. Students who can’t afford full 50,000 could get merit aid at other good schools, but not very likely to afford those top 20s.</p>
<p>Again, many anecdotes. When it comes to things like income and “class” status, it’s all relative, which is why I won’t chime in with my own stories of selling apples to gin up my college tuition. There will always be someone who had to sell apple rinds. But the specific issue addressed in this thread (I think) is whether the “top” private schools are pricing themselves beyond the aspirations of middle/upper middle class students because those students/families are more often being asked to pay a higher percentage (or all) of the very high sticker prices of such schools. I don’t think anyone who is arguing that this may be the case is suggesting that it’s wrong for such schools to favor lower income students with need aid over middle/upper middle students. That’s a rational policy decision, whether you agree with it or not. As oft-noted here, the colleges only have so much money to spread around. </p>
<p>The question to me is not whether the possible (as yet, unproven) effect of diminishing the ability of middle/upper middle students to attend such universities is “fair.” It’s more a question as to whether it’s wise. Like every other “class” of students, those students bring something to those schools too, and having fewer of them will leave a mark in its own way.</p>
<p>As someone else noted, I think we may see a larger cohort of high achievers heading for state flagships and “next tier” LACs this year as a result of this squeeze. For my own son’s sake, I hope that’s true.</p>
<p>I would LOVE to know where some of you are from. Univ of Fla tuition is $4K per year. Univ of Va. is about $7K. California up til recently was very inexpensive. The Northeast has very expensive schools because they don’t have as strong a public university system as other regions of the country.</p>
<p>“Where there IS some injustice - no adjustment for metro area cost of living”</p>
<p>People are, in effect, purchasing all kinds of luxuries, like access to museums, arts, and beaches, when they pay for that high cost-of-living area. They could live much more cheaply in Tulsa. New York, Bay Area, Chicago, etc. are expensive because lots of people want to enjoy the many perks of living there. Apparently we think we’re getting a good deal, because otherwise a lot of us would move to Tulsa.</p>
<p>Sure, some of us are inextricably tied to NYC/SF by job or family, and we’d leave and save money in Tulsa if we could. But that’s not true for most of us. We’d want to stay in our awesome metro areas even if our families were scattered around the country and we could get a job anywhere (observe the behavior of young doctors). It’s worth every penny to us. So I’m not sure why college aid offices should treat us any differently from the guy in Tulsa who buys a house so big that his cost of living is equal to ours. He thinks that’s worth every penny, too. He just has different taste than we do.</p>
<p>I think a lot of private colleges are in trouble. The most selective ones are not since there are even more folks than ever that are willing to shell out the big bucks for the HPY, but families are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay Harvard prices for Hartwick, for instance, even though it might be the best fit of the choices. I suspect more schools are going to have to be need aware in admissions and give out their merit money even more strategically. I have heard from counselors at the schools I know that though the competition for the most sought seats have been as tough as ever, for the full pay students, there is some loosening up from some schools that are not as selective.</p>
OTOH if a given college’s aid policies skew in such a way that its unaffordable for a particular range of the income spectrum, while other ranges above and below can still attend - I would think thats at least a marketing issue to them, and perhaps raises the question of whether their financial aid policies are doing what they are designed to achieve. I think that is why the Ivies able to afford it, have tried to shift enough resources to make it more affordable for middle and upper middle class. OTOH not every top tier (or well, any tier) school has those resources. I do not think its an easy choice they face, and I am not so quick to blame them - but I can see why it can be seen as a serious issue.</p>