<p>I don’t think it would be “unfair” for Harvard to charge $200,000 a year to attend, and to do away with all aid at the same time. It’s a private institution. It might be unwise for it to do that, though.</p>
<p>If Harvard decided to charge $200,000 per year and eliminated all financial aid it should and likely would lose many of the implicit subsidies it gets from the government [tax deductions, research funding, etc.]</p>
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<p>Bingo. Although at least a few of them are making a serious effort to make it less so. (Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be a cynic about elite schools! Must be getting old!)</p>
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<p>Well this is a crock in a discussion about undergraduate education and the cost thereof. The undergrad schools for the gentlemen in question include Occidental and Georgetown. And why stop at 1989? I guess because Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College? And if we keep going back from there, we see Georgia Tech/USNA, Michigan, Whittier College …</p>
<p>Or we can look at the VPs from the same era: Delaware, Wyoming (although he did flunk out of Yale), Harvard, DePauw … </p>
<p>Forgive me, but I don’t see the pattern.</p>
<p>Each Ivy needs about $150 million per year in extra funding to handle undergraduate education that tuition and other income doesn’t cover. Here’s an idea: auction off 15 slots per year with a minimum reserve of $10 million. I would bet that the Ivies and some other schools would easily get at least 15 kids out of China and Russia or the Middle East and cover the nut. Perhaps the only reason this hasn’t been done is because of the blantant "outcry’ over money and standards that would result. But I will bet you that 15 or more kids get in each year on a lesser basis (football team needs a wide receiver; orchestra needs an oboe) – how about the school needs to cover funding needs!?</p>
<p>^^^^^who says they haven’t? Meg whitman’s initial $30 million to build and maintain whitman college, the 6th residential college of p’ton. She was class of '77, her son class of '09. Key word, “initial” donation, and that isn’t including tuition. Frist would be another, and the list for just son’s tenure is more than 10 slots at that level.</p>
<p>Again a great deal for those who can write that check without blinking.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
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<p>Unlikely, but not impossible. I’ve known kids recruited for golf, archery, and squash who attended high schools that didn’t have those sports. You never know.</p>
<p>It’s hard to look at the economics (supply/demand - people will pay X and the school only charges Y) and apply it to colleges because colleges have a demand themselves of the caliber of students enrolling. From the perspective of the elite colleges, they’re non-profit (so they’re not trying to make the most money for shareholders or their senior management/owners) and they’re doing pretty well financially as it is. Universities just don’t have the same incentive to change the status quo that for-profit businesses have. Who already in the university benefits from it charging as much as possible to fill it’s spots? No one I can think of.</p>
<p>I don’t want to get bogged down in arguments about tiers and levels so please know that I am using these terms fairly freely . . .
I think that many LACs that are a tick down from the very top group set list price tuition in an aspirational way. That is . . . they aspire to be seen in a certain category, so they tuition match up, then offer discounts via merit scholarships. This seems especially common in close geographical groupings. It seems like many LACs right now have tuition in the 37k-39k range. Is that just how much it cost to deliver the education, what they think the market will support, or are some of the 33k schools trying to play up?</p>
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<p>I have no idea of Hanna’s finances but I am willing to bet that Hanna does make more than 151K/yr, probably much more.</p>
<p>Many don’t seem to realize (or acknowledge) that “the 1%” are actually a very large absolute number of families, especially if you include the internationals, and if HYPS just started with that pool and took the most qualified applicants from those families, their student bodies would still be filled with really smart, highly driven and accomplished people. It would be a more homogeneous group in some respects, and that would make the student body a bit less interesting for everyone who attends, but nevertheless in terms of academic strength or talent, they would not see a big drop.</p>
<p>I generally agree with the idea of allowing tuition to be subject to market forces. I have never understood why Yale tuition is about the same as that of Connecticut college.</p>
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<p>Personally, I think this is a great concept and I wouldn’t have a problem if whatever college did so - as long as the kid’s name was kept secret and there was some assurance that he / she could meet some kind of reasonable academic standard in the classroom. The benefit of bringing in that kind of money is worth it.</p>
<p>They do it already, but keep the whole process secret–except for the name on the building.</p>
<p>“wait until you start making 151K a year (150K is a threshold for Harvard financial aid initiative) and see if you still think it is fair for you to pay 80K a year for Harvard education.”</p>
<p>Yeah, no waiting involved over here. I used to be a lawyer at a big firm.</p>
<p>It’s perfectly fair to pay what something costs. $80k is approximately what Harvard spends per undergraduate. I don’t think well-off people are entitled to a charitable subsidy when they purchase a luxury good like a Harvard education. If Harvard chooses to offer the subsidy anyway, ok, but there’s nothing unfair about it if they don’t. Anyway, there are lots of less expensive schools, so someone who thinks this one is overpriced can go elsewhere. Every Harvard admit can find a (much) less expensive option at a respected university.</p>
<p>I’m much, much more worried about what 4-year public universities are charging than about Harvard. Need-based financial aid is running way behind tuition at those schools. Our success as a nation has more to do with the millions of people who’ve traditionally been able to get a solid education at a low price versus the thousands who go to Harvard et al.</p>
<p>I’m still stuck on why raising tuition at the top 25 should even be considered. Aren’t these the colleges that offer generous FA to up to 70% of their student body already? Do many of their graduates carry exorbitant loan balances? Why would they need to raise more money via tuition if they already have multi-billion dollar endowments? Why would they want to reserve more spots for the richest people in the world? Wouldn’t this reinforce elitism even more? By the same token, if it enabled all spots other than those few to be tuition-free, wouldn’t it create a less financially diverse student body?</p>
<p>I understand that these colleges could do it and people would pay it, but whose interest does it serve?</p>
<p>Bay–The schools are not proposing to do this; Lemann was just making a point that a lot of people WOULD pay much more.</p>
<p>Actually Lemann could have buttressed his argument about HY by pointing out that all nine Justices of the Supreme Court studied at either Yale or Harvard law school:</p>
<p>Harvard Law: Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Elena Kagan. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg began at Harvard Law but finished up at Columbia Law so she could be closer to her husband.) </p>
<p>Yale Law: Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas.</p>
<p>There’s more diversity in their undergrad schools, tho.</p>
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<p>I’m curious as to where that number comes from.</p>
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If you were a lawyer at a big firm I suspect you made significantly more than 150K. Depending on how much more or how well you planned it may not be a particularly big deal to pay 80K. Have you actually paid that amount out of pocket for your children?</p>
<p>Because for people making $151K I suspect that’s a pretty big budgetary item, and may hurt a bit. Whether or not it’s worth it or “fair” is another question. Paying for a kidney transplant is worth it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.</p>
<p>And I think that was the point the poster was making, not questioning your earning power.</p>
<p>I like the supposition I heard on 60 minutes last week;</p>
<p>Are the HYPS good at creating “winners”, or just picking them?</p>
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<p>Yes, absolutely. I was not questioning the earning power. The “wait” comment, was hypothetical. </p>
<p>I guess I am not very eloquent, but what I was trying to say in that ENTIRE post, was that Colleges have their own way to determine whether or not somebody is rich enough to pay full price. </p>
<p>In some cases the way they determine that is flawed (in my opinion).</p>
<p>In the case of someone just starting making 151K a year, 80K a year will not only hurt them, it will destroy them. There is a big difference between someone making 6 figures their entire careers and someone just starting making that much or coming of long period of un/under-employment. Yet, for financial aid purposes (without taking into consideration assets), these two families will be considered in the same boat. </p>
<p>I understand that private colleges, because they are private, can do whatever they want to do. On the other hand, they are subsidized by the tax payers in more ways than one, so I think I have the right to scrutinize the way they determine financial aid :).</p>
<p>Giterdone, people who hire for a living (like me) have read hundreds of studies on Selection Effect vs. Treatment Effect. Briefly, if I want to be a fashion model and am 5’3" and weigh 160 lbs, it doesn’t matter whether I get accepted to Ford or Elite or any of the top modeling agencies. No matter what they do for me or how they style my hair or teach me to pose or bleach my teeth- I am never going to become a fashion model. Their selection criteria are extremely narrow and if you’ve got what they’re looking for, it won’t take much time or effort to turn you into a productive resource. Hence the Selection Effect- it’s all in the screening.</p>
<p>Contrast that with the army. Assuming I meet some minimum height, weight, health standards, and are not a convicted felon (exaggerating but you get my point) I’m going to be good to go for basic training. The selection criteria are very broad, lots of people qualify, but what distinguishes a soldier from someone walking down the street is what they actually do to you and teach you once you get there. Hence the Treatment Effect- they screen very broadly but they “do something to you” once you get there.</p>
<p>For lots of management type roles and high end entry level jobs, we just don’t have the resources to hunt and peck through half a million resumes a year to get the talent we need. For sure we could be recruiting all over the country and find tremendous students graduating from all sorts of places. But that’s costly and time consuming. It’s just easier and cheaper to send folks to the usual list of “hard to get into” colleges- which allows us to leverage off the Princeton admissions process-- and then hire from that pre-culled pool of kids.</p>
<p>Nobody I’ve ever worked with deluded themselves that we couldn’t find fantastic people in lots of different schools. But when you have Swarthmore and Harvard and Dartmouth and Stanford and U Chicago who are so good at picking winners already, we’d be nuts to reinvent the wheel and start from scratch.</p>