@bclintonk Good point! Look at NJ as well.
tOSU’s NPC at http://sfa.osu.edu/incoming-freshmen/about-aid/net-price-calculator suggests that such a student who needs to live at the school will have a net price of $13,555, while one living with parents* will have a net price of $8,169 (assuming that ACT/SAT score and class rank asked for in the NPC do not cause it to show any merit scholarships).
So those EFC = $0 students may be able to stretch to afford tOSU with federal direct loan and some part time work earnings if they can live with parents who happen to live nearby, but probably not if their parents live out of commuting range.
- tOSU's NPC does show $4,806 meals and housing cost for the student living with parents, as well as a $2,100 higher miscellaneous/personal cost for such a student, presumably due to commuting costs, so it is not assuming that living with parents and commuting is "free" like so many on these forums do, although the cost is lower than for living on campus.
@momofthreeboys:
“No matter how you cut the cake if you are full pay you will most likely need a minimum $80,000 to $100,000 access to cash after fed loans to the students as parents to pay for college even if you are instate.”
Only for a 4 year live-away college experience. And most of that cost is actually room&board (which anyone living away from parents would have to pay even if they didn’t go to college).
As I have mentioned, even the free colleges in Europe don’t give away money for room and board (though some colleges and states in the US do give fin aid grants for R&B).
Also, as I have mentioned before, while a 4Y isn’t within commuting distance for everyone, most in this country are close enough to attend a CC so if their state has a strong CC-to-4Y transfer setup, with average public tuition being $10K and average public R&B being $11K and the Pell each year being $6K and subsidized Stafford loans being $5.5-$7.5K, if a kid goes to CC for 2 years (and saves up the Pell and Stafford money they get), they would have enough for 2 years at a 4Y to get a degree if they plan it right.
“Among these schools the University of Michigan is the only one that meets full need for in-state students, yet they all pour substantial amounts into merit awards.”
How do you define “substantial”? Merit scholarships are very difficult to get at UMich and UIUC (and until recently, UW-Madison if you are OOS as well). Not every B10 school is OSU (or MSU or IU).
@ucbalumnus:
“So those EFC = $0 students may be able to stretch to afford tOSU with federal direct loan and some part time work earnings if they can live with parents who happen to live nearby, but probably not if their parents live out of commuting range.”
Well, note that a 0 EFC kid will almost certainly be offered a work-study job ($3.5K). Stafford loans are $5.5K-7.5K. So they would have to earn $2.5K-4.5K during the summer. Doable even if they live on campus.
Note that before the GOP Congress killed it off, the Perkins loan would have provided another $5.5K a year.
What proportion of the merit aid offered by those Midwest schools is going to relatively wealthy OOS students who still end up paying as much or more than in-state students? Isn’t that the Alabama model, effectively subsidizing in-state students by offering discounts to attract those OOS students? In that case it’s not reducing the ability to offer need-based aid to in-state students, its actually increasing it, though you could argue less spots are left for in-state students.
@bclintonk, actually, before the GOP Congress killed off the Perkins loan, a 0 EFC kid could have attended even the highest COA B10 school you listed (granted, one of the cheapest majors there). $6K Pell + $6K IMAP (IL state grant for poor IL kids) + $5.5-7.5K subsidized Stafford + $5.5K Perkins + $3.5K work-study meaning $2.5-4.5K in summer earnings to get to $31K.
You know, it’s occurred to me that the vast majority of the participants in this discussion have never actually had to piece together funding for college like this (speaking as someone who received the Pell and IMAP and Perkins and also did work-study). Of course, back then, the Pell+IMAP+Stafford+Perkins covered everything for UIUC even for engineering, with no need to do work-study or contribute summer earnings.
@Twoin18, and note that merit scholarships at UMich and UIUC (and UW-Madison until recently when they jacked up the OOS tuition charge as well as increased OOS scholarships) are extremely difficult to get if OOS.
The travesty with fin aid is that Federal (and state) fin aid grants for poor kids have not kept up. In real terms, the max Pell Grant is roughly the same as it was 40 years ago while college costs are several times what they were in the '70’s.
For that matter, the Stafford loan limit hasn’t increased in a quarter century and the GOP killed off the (low-interest) Perkins loan.
If they increase the Stafford loan amount, the schools would eat it up even faster. I think that most students can’t really handle more than $30k in loans. One of my kids got the Perkins loan one year, and it really wasn’t a good thing. She has that $2000 extra in loans, has been taking the Stafford loans, and I don’t want her to take anything more than that.
If the limits were higher, she’d take the max. Because she can’t take more, she has to work more, I have to pay more as we go. She’s not going to have a high paying job when she graduates, and it is going to be very difficult for her to pay $300 or so per month in loan payments.
We knew all that, so chose a cheaper school to being with. If loan maximums were raised, she (and a lot of other kids) would borrow the max and end up owing $50k or more at graduation. That’s too much.
The availability of alot of easy, cheap loans was a big driver of the insane college tuition increases in the 90s and 2000s.
Remember too that if a FP kid is offered $20,000 in merit at a $65,000/year school, his family will still pay $45,000 each year. This complicates the argument that all “aid” should go to kidd who absolutely need it. The discounts not only attract students, they often bring in $.
It’s all very murky.
@hoosierdaddy18 Son is deciding between 3 schools and we went back to one and requested a review of his fin aid offer and they came back with additional assistance. Most schools allow for this and often have forms online for this very purpose. Worthwhile in our case.
“The availability of alot of easy, cheap loans was a big driver of the insane college tuition increases in the 90s and 2000s”
The absolute Stafford subsidized loan limits haven’t increased since the early '90’s (so in real terms, they have decreased) and only a small percentage qualify for the Perkins.
There are bigger drivers of the tuition increases. Increasing inequality, for one.
I wonder if the price increases are simply evidence of normal price discovery in a capitalist environment. Perhaps they were “underpriced” in the past compared to what the public believed they were worth. The fact that so many people keep paying the higher prices indicates that many people believe they are worth the money. However this is only true at the top tier schools. Below that, private colleges need to heavily discount to induce people to attend. It seems like between 30-40k is the price that the majority are willing to pay for private schools on that second level. The top privates could probably increase the sticker price substantially and still attract a large number of qualified full pay students.
Price increases at public universities have far more to do with the tax base’s unwillingness or inability to fund education. In my personal opinion, this is a huge mistake and a moral failure. But thats just me.
@gallentjill, yes, for most of history, arguably, the top colleges were underpriced relative to demand and they were because the folks who ran those institutions didn’t see them as profit centers. So long as they could meet costs, that was good enough. But the arms race (which has always been there in the academic sphere) extended to other areas and I’d argue that it’s due to rising inequality and the rise of the top 1/5/10%, meaning there are more folks both willing to pay more and also demand more in services and amenities.
The availability of alot of easy, cheap loans was a big driver of the insane college tuition increases in the 90s and 2000s.
The reason college costs so much is that the things that the college consumer expects from a college cost so much. Staff, facilities, programming … it all costs money, and lots of it. Higher education does not pay particularly well for most staff members, but pay + benefits add up. It’s a very labor intensive proposition to educate students. Computer labs, writing centers, clubs, dorms that are at least halfway decent, staffing - including cleaning - for the dorms, public safety, mental health services, enrollment & student services, internet all over campus, etc, etc, etc. Every single thing that is needed, as well as all the things that are wanted, cost money. Federal regulations require staff for compliance. On and on. It is very expensive to run a college.
Well professors are paid a lot more than they were in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s too. Room and board costs a lot more. Books are 10x as much as they were. I had a book that cost $16 and it was published by my uncle so I made him send me a copy because it was sooo expensive. Now? I’d be thankful the book wasn’t $125.
My tuition my first semester was $350 and that included books. I think room and board was about that too.
Here are the need-based and non-need based FA budgets (institutional funds only) as reported on their CDS by the schools I mentioned:
Illinois: $82.7 million need-based / $15.3 million non-need based / meets 65% of need
Indiana: $48.9 million need-based / $64.7 million non-need based / meets 69% of need
Michigan: $149.1 million need-based / $60.6 million non-need based / meets 100% of need for MI residents
Michigan State: $87.5 million need-based / $61.3 million non-need based / meets 59% of need
Minnesota: $57.4 million need-based / $14.1 million non-need based / meets 72% of need
Ohio State: $114 million need-based / $74.7 million non-need based / meets 70% of need
Wisconsin: $55.8 million need-based / $13.7 million non-need based / meets 80% of need
To answer your question, I’d say any spending above $10 million on non-need based aid is “substantial” if you’re not meeting full need for in-state students. Obviously the amounts that go into this vary by school, and I have no problem whatsoever with Michigan spending $60 million a year on non-need based aid because they already meet full need for in-state students. In their case the merit money is gravy. But it sure looks like some of these schools could meet full need if that was their priority.
I don’t mean to single out B1G schools. Only a handful of public institutions meet full need for in-state students, and most of them give out merit money.
It’s not entirely a direct trade-off, of course. “Non-need based” includes athletic scholarships which are a very specialized type of merit award, often paid in whole or in part out of athletic department revenue. Many merit scholarships come from endowed funds which can only be used for that purpose. And as someone mentioned, merit awards are sometimes used to lure higher-paying students, in-state or OOS, who indirectly bolster the school’s ability to support need-based aid. But to my mind, public institutions like Ohio State, Indiana and Michigan State that spend lavishly on non-need based aid while shorting their own states’ residents with need have their institutional priorities seriously out of whack.
@bclintonk:
“To answer your question, I’d say any spending above $10 million on non-need based aid is “substantial” if you’re not meeting full need for in-state students.”
At UIUC, 332 student-athletes received an average of about $30K in athletic scholarships:
https://dailyillini.com/sports/2015/10/26/athletic-scholarships-at-illinois-by-the-numbers/
That takes them to $10M right there. So what you are saying then is that you deem giving any academic merit scholarships to be too substantial if a public school does not meet full need for in-state students.