Fa Sucks

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
21

<p>Well, just spending 15 seconds looking for the figures, the state appropriations is pretty easy to track down. In 1998, New York gave Cornell $141M. Last year I think it was close to $170M, but after adjusting for inflation, it's basically flat.</p>

<p><a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000050.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000050.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you look at contract college tuition, you will see that it really started to increase at the turn of the century. It went from an average rise of about 5 percent a year to 10 percent a year. New York State likes to spend money on keeping very old, sick people alive for six more months, not on future generations.</p>

<p><a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000212.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000212.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The alumni giving rate is based off conversations I have had with various individuals close to the question-- both in development as well as in other offices across campus -- so I can't <em>prove</em> it. But there are a couple of things to expand upon: </p>

<p>1) The distinction between the contract colleges and the endowed units have greatly diminished over time. Forty years ago, there was a not large, but significant, gap between the different colleges in terms of student culture, student background, etc. Not so today, and the alumni giving rates have tended to equalize in recent class years.</p>

<p>2) The alumni giving rates may be biased by the fact that alumni of the contract colleges tend to have less lucrative careers, by their own choice. Dairy farmers, union organizers, horticulturalists, and social workers tend not to have a lot of cash hanging around, no matter how succesful they are in their field.</p>

<p>When I was a student I used to work for some people close to Day Hall, so I feel pretty comfortable with the suggestions I have made. Reasonable people can certainly disagree, but I don't think I'm completely off base.</p>

22

<p>
[quote]
Yeah I feel you on that. Parents make 70K a year, and we are expected to pay full price. Granted, we have a lot of rental properties, but we depend on that for our income, and we still have mortgages on some of them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Aren't there ways to legally hide the fact that your family owns rental properties? Like set up an LLC or something? Somehow I suspect that the relatively well-off are better able to take advantage of all of these aid packages than the middle class.</p>

23

<p>ILR has the second highest starting salary out of the 7 undergraduate colleges, and is right up there with aem (in average salary) when it comes to students going into financial services...and the majority of ILRies don't go into the low-paying "union" jobs you suggest. You could have pulled off this generalization if most of the students in these colleges actually did what you say. But, on average, they earn more or about the same as students from the endowed colleges.</p>

<p>And the major point of my earlier post in response to your "A fair amount of alums feel that they pay their state taxes, so they don't need to further donate money to the university" statement is that you can talk to a dozen high-ranking university officials and still not be able to make such a statement and have it counted as anywhere close to accurate.</p>

<p>Also, the monies given by NY State may have remained relatively "flat" over the years, but the way you put it makes it seem that NY State is being stingy when it comes to resources. A university typically spends 5 to 6% of its endowment each year. 5% of Cornell's endowment have been typically (recently) between $215,000,000 and $275,000,000. This may be slightly higher than the monies NY State gives, but being that contract college student account for less than 1/2 (about 40%) of the total Cornell student body, I'd say this figure is fair...even if it has been flat.</p>

<p>Additionally, you bring up the fact that the contract college tuition (for in-state residents) at the turn of the century started to really go up like this was a one-side affair. For the 1999-2000 school year, the endowed tuition was $23,760.</p>

24

<p>We may be at the point where reasonable people should agree to disagree, but as I have plenty of time on my hand these days:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Additionally, you bring up the fact that the contract college tuition (for in-state residents) at the turn of the century started to really go up like this was a one-side affair. For the 1999-2000 school year, the endowed tuition was $23,760.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Maybe the best statistic to cite would be that in the 80s and 90s in-state tuition as a percentage of endowed tuition stood between 39 and 43 percent. But in the last seven years, it's climbed to above 55 percent. Assuming that there are no significant differences in the costs of educating a student in the endowed colleges vs the contract colleges, and that the purpose of the state subsidy is lower tuition costs for in-state residents, it suggests that the state's subsidy isn't keeping up. </p>

<p>But the more important point is this: If more contract college alums knew this, perhaps they would be motivated to give more money so that future students would be able to afford the same education the received. And we wouldn't have to hear about current students not receiving the financial aid packages they expected.</p>

<p>
[quote]
And the major point of my earlier post in response to your "A fair amount of alums feel that they pay their state taxes, so they don't need to further donate money to the university" statement is that you can talk to a dozen high-ranking university officials and still not be able to make such a statement and have it counted as anywhere close to accurate.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I've heard otherwise from various sources, and chose to mention it on this anonymous forum. You're free to take it as a grain of salt.</p>

<p>And I didn't mean to suggest that all ILR alums become union organizers (I certainly am not one), or that contract college alumni aren't extremely successful in their endeavors. I was just mentioning that there is a non-trivial difference in the occupations and livelihoods of alums -- particularly older alums -- between the contracts colleges and the endowed colleges that may help to explain the variation in alumni giving rates that I attested to. (Which again, you may take with a grain a salt.) Until the last generation or so, the Ag school was really an Ag school. </p>

<p>Perhaps another example would help -- the College of Home Economics, or more recently, the College of Human Ecology. Until the 1970s, the college was predominantly filled with women, and a lot of these women never entered the labor force. (Of course, a lot of women from the College of Home Economics did enter the labor force and were incredibly successful in their careers.) So a lot of the alumnae of this college -- particularly from the classes between 1940 and 1970, now in prime "giving years" -- may not have the financial resources that their more male counterparts in Engineering and Arts (which were 75%+ male before the 60s) are able to give back to the University today.</p>

<p>The above example also helps to explain why Dartmouth and Princeton are always so highly ranked when it comes to alumni giving rates. They were all male until thirty years ago. Thankfully, today, males and females can attend the same colleges and work in the same professions.</p>

25

<p>got my FA package today. i am not being offered any aid....</p>

<p>that was hard to tell my dad when NYU gave me 30,000.... because he knows i want to and WILL go to Cornell. I just feel really guilty and I am really confused...</p>

<p>we may try to appeal.</p>

26

<p>dande:</p>

<p>NYU offers both need-based and merit aid. Cornell will not match merit aid.</p>

27

<p>Does NYU use the CSS? I think that's the killer for us and a lot of people. Finding schools that do not use CSS will probably result in more money for people who have a fair amount of assets but not necessarily a super-high income. But that is not going to help any of us at this point!</p>

28

<p>Has anyone heard of anyone that tried to appeal based on other colleges offering better need-based aid and won?</p>

29

<p>Just got another FA estimate from one of my med schools...79,000 EFC. Jesus Christ.</p>

30

<p>yeah do any fa appeals actually work? i just found out that my family wont get any aid. i think the only thing that hurts worse than getting rejected from your dream school is working your tail off in high school, being on cloud nine after getting in, and finally realizing that you can't go to your dream school because it costs too much.....</p>

31

<p>^ I'm in the same situation. My parents make too much to be considered for any aid, let alone any substantial aid, but we're not rich enough to afford $50,000 a year without any problems. I seriously thought that I might as well have been rejected.</p>

32

<p>I agree, the worst is getting accepted, being excited, and then not being able to go for financial reasons.</p>

33

<p>I think the simplest solution would be to cut class size. endowment per student would go up, and Cornell could spend more money per student. At the rate it's going, anybody who is accepted to cornell and any other ivy simply will not come to cornell, if they need finanical aid. Thus, I feel like over time, Cornell will end up just being full of affluent kids.</p>

34

<p>I do think that cutting the class size will help the FA situation.</p>

<p>However, if you make Cornell smaller, it'll cease to be Cornell. What attracted me to Cornell in the first place was it's size, the fact it had 7 different colleges and is so diverse in both its student population and its course offerings. If Cornell had 2 colleges (the Arts and Sciences and Engineering colleges) and 1200 per class, it'd be just like every other top 15 school.</p>

35

<p>nuit:</p>

<p>Your parents income puts your family in the top 5% of the US. Only Harvard and Yale provide need-based aid to that income bracket.</p>

36

<p>My bf is going to Princeton and I know for a fact that his parents probably make over 150,000 a year and he got $20,000 a year financial aid. But then we were comparing and princeton has 4,923 undergrad while cornell has 13,510 and princeton's endowment is $15.8 billion while cornell is $5.5 billion. so....BASICALLY. -__-</p>

37

<p>Well, Princeton started off with rich people...who would give the school more endowment money in the first place.</p>

38

<p>bluebayou - try not to judge others when you don't know the whole story. I don't know anything about nuit's situation, but I read an earlier post by cjmdjm, and the two of us are in a very similar situation. My family has moderate income, but my father is in rental real estate so he owns multiple rental properties that equate to a large amount of money in assets. Because of this, the fa department gave us no money. They don't realize, however, that if my family were to sell off those assets, we suddenly would have no income. And to make matters worse, my parents havent saved any money for retirement, because they depend on those properties for there retirement money. My family can't just sell away the properties, so we get screwed over. Just because a family doesnt get aid does not mean that they can afford the tuition and they just need to suck it up.</p>

<p>To cjmdjm and nuit: if its any consolation to you and to anyone who cannot attend Cornell due to financial reasons, just remember that you're not alone. I will most likely be attending UT-Austin next fall b/c my family cannot afford Cornell, and because my sister goes to UT and already knows plenty of people there, she's told some of her friends about my situation. I've gotten facebook messages from friends of hers at UT who got into princeton, yale, and plenty of other great schools who simply could not afford it, and the thing they all have in common is that they really do love the University of Texas. i think its good to know both that most people will be happy wherever they go, and that extremely intelligent students go to state schools all the time due to financial reasons. we're not alone.</p>

39

<p>rch:</p>

<p>Austin is a fantastic college experience -- Congrats.</p>

<p>I am not judging anyone. On another thread, Nuit posted his/her parents' income for the world to see. Assuming the info to be true, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, her/his family is wealthy (top 5% of American families) by all statistical standards, even if they don't feel that way. Absent extenuating circumstances (high medical bills, multiple kids in college, etc), only Harvard and Yale (and Princeton?) provide need-based aid to that income bracket. The other Ivies, and Stanford, do not (again, absent extenuating circumstances).</p>

<p>I do understand about retirement, as well, since fafsa/profile only helps those with a Defined Benefit retirement plan. Anyone saving for retirement thru a 401(k) has that money added back into efc. Fair? No way, but that's the law, just as it is the law that "rental properties" are considered assets, and no different that a family that has shares of stock, or cash in the bank, which they are holding for retirement. And, yes, Cornell and every other FinAid officer does realize that the rental properties create your family income. </p>

<p>My only point relates to the implication of title of this thread: that Cornell's FA is not good. Don't pick on Cornell itself, it is the design of FinAid policy. (There is an excellent thread about all of this under Financial Aid heading -- it's titled "Crushed Dreams".)</p>

40

<p>I can understand the woe of some property-holding families that got little or no financial aid. I'm only speculating, but maybe if you appeal on the basis that your family really wouldn't be able to have much of an income without those assets, maybe you could get more aid. It seems like from the FA office's point of view, one could sell all those assets and get a different job that doesn't require owning anything (but I guess that would also be problematic because of the slumping housing market...)</p>