<p>So I was thinking, if at HYP everyone were forced to pay the SAME amount for tuition, what would be the cost? I am inclined to think that if ALL private universities were forced to charge EVERYONE the SAME, the tuition would be comparable to an in-state university.
For example, if all of the money put aside for fin-aid were instead spread out evenly to each student as a grant, would tuition costs decrease significantly?</p>
<p>I'm not saying that it is unfair to have the need/merit based finaid system. But it seems to be economically repugnant.</p>
<p>I think your thinking about HYP is a bit on the faulty side. Much of their generous need based aid is provided because of the very large endowments those schools have, not by the payments of tuition by all students.</p>
<p>True. What about at other universities with smaller endowments yet good fin aid?
Like, Columbia University, which has a tiny endowment (only 240,951 per student).</p>
<p>Are you saying that just the HYP part is faulty? Or in general the idea is faulty? Either way if they used the endowments to subsidize tuition, how cheap do you think it would be?</p>
<p>Those schools already subsidize everyone who attends, even the “full-pay” families, since they do not charge the true cost of providing an education and all of the associated amenities (the rest is covered by endowment and donations, as thumper mentioned).</p>
<p>Most colleges do not offer significant amounts of financial aid. They might have 3 - 4 competitive scholarships for a few thousand dollars, and some schools even have a handful of full-tuition or even full cost merit scholarships, but the value of those is not nearly enough to “spread out” to every student with the goal of reducing the cost to any significant degree.</p>
<p>The goal of the need-based model is to make education accessible to those who could not otherwise afford it. If that’s repugnant to you, perhaps you should consider the alternative…schools would be full of kids from the same socio-economic background. </p>
<p>I agree that the merit based model is somewhat repugnant when it’s done almost exclusively for marketing purposes.</p>
<p>Columbia doesn’t have a “tiny” endowment. Until last year they had a $7 billion endowment; now it’s $5.9 billion. There are only 6 schools in the country with larger: Harvard ($26.6 billion), Yale ($16.3 billion), Princeton ($12.6 billion), Stanford ($12.6 billion) MIT ($8 billion), and University of Michigan ($6 billion). If you count the University of Texas as a system, they have a $12 billion endowment.</p>
<p>If top schools forced every student to pay the full cost of their education, it’d be even higher than what you’re paying now. Undergraduate tuition and fees don’t cover the full gamut of expenses that it takes to educate every student; at top schools, some of that is covered by endowment, grants, and gifts.</p>
<p>True - At public schools, a good portion is assisted by tax dollars - that’s why they’re much cheaper for in-state students. And publics aren’t $50,000 for OOS students, not because it doesn’t cost that much per student, but because they wouldn’t attract may OOS students as cash cows if they cost the same as top privates.</p>