<p>I think the privatization of post-secondary education (the Government should get out of the college business) would solve a lot of these inequities.</p>
<p>Go where you can afford, compete for private enterprise dollars that might be available to subsidize your education. But don’t make the public finance anything beyond H.S.</p>
<p>Is anyone upset with the process after their kids finish their schooling? Four years is a long time to provide for accepting the change in any preconceived notions that we might have had.</p>
<p>I talked to a parent with a daughter that will be going to a $41,000 college. It appears that they don’t have a lot of savings despite a salary similar to mine (not bad and not great). This kid is the first of four. All they got was a Stafford. The child and spouse really want the private school. The parent wanted to send the child to the local state college (I think that the educational quality would be similar - the private is a religious school which is where the difference is). He told me that he doesn’t know what he will do and he didn’t even want to think of what would happen with the other kids.</p>
<p>I think that not planning ahead can leave you with only bad options when crunch time arrives.</p>
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<p>It’s not about being fair. Merit aid is a recruitment tool. Schools that don’t offer it…don’t have to. They’ve got plenty of people happy to take full-pay spots.</p>
<p>The definition of “100% full need” is going to vary from school to school. At Harvard, a household income of $150k can translate to an EFC of $15k. At Columbia, it’ll be far higher. Is this fair? Doesn’t matter–it’s solely a question of how much a college can afford to and/or chooses to use for need-based aid.</p>
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Yeah, but if one kid is more educated it’s better for society as a whole. Why stop at HS? What makes year 12 a golden figure or number. Why not just privatize education totally from the get-go?</p>
<p>“It would be interesting to see what would happen if a school like WIlliams raised its tuition to what it claims it costs to educate each student. What would happen in terms of applications? If they also guaranteed to meet full need (albeit their own definition), I wonder what the breakpoints would be in terms of income/assets.”</p>
<p>I think it is likely about $20k more than they have as the list price now. Of course, they keep raising the list price, and will reach that in about 5-7 years. But income/assets of the top 5% of the population are rising faster, so at that point ($20k more than today), COA will actually be even more inexpensive than it is today. (and it is very cheap now).</p>
<p>It wouldn’t affect the non-full-pays one iota, as the extra funds “could” (if the institution chose) fund the COA discount. (Notice I didn’t use the words “financial aid”, “need-based aid”, “merit aid”, “scholarships”, etc. which really are just a bunch of euphemisms - do you get a “scholarship” when you purchase an airline seat less expensively than your neighbor? is it “merit aid”? “need-based aid”? (because you refused to buy until the price went down?)</p>
<p>I actually think college is just like an airplane seat. They are both commodities that are sold. No one is required to purchase a seat or a college education. I don’t actually think a college education is a right. (Start the hate mail now :)) But I do believe that an educated society is best and that you don’t have to just go to an Ivy league to be educated.</p>
<p>I was referring to universities that don’t give any merit aid at all. It has nothing to do with whether you are “good enough”. They lose out of the student who is great, but decides that they would really rather not spend $50K a year on an education.</p>
<p>A major difference between airlines and universities is that there is ferocious competition between airlines resulting in routine bankruptcies and mergers and this keeps prices down.</p>
<p>Sorry, I agree. I don’t think college education is a right either, and certainly not Ivy League education costing society 80k dollars a year. However, I do believe having a highly educated populous is in societal interest that, in economic terms, education is a merit good.</p>
<p>If you want to compare education to an airline, then you have to normalize the corporate structure as well. That means that a university is not only private, but a for-profit private, a la University of Phoenix. If education is fully privatized, then the name of the game will be cost-cutting for efficiency and increasing prices as much as possible.</p>
<p>Players with “market power” such as HYP will charge the maximum price they can to fill their seats (and I expect they can fill 6000 undergrads EASILY charging more than 200 grand a year).</p>
<p>Though I agree with your sentiment, at some level, I think the airline analogy is completely inappropriate.</p>
<p>laserp, those schools that don’t give merit aid don’t care about losing out on one particular student. They have plenty more where that one came from. It’s no loss for them.</p>
<p>How true! I wonder what would happen if all full pay people decided that they no longer wanted to pony up the $250K for an education and instead went to more affordable options.</p>
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<p>The number is arbitrary - but if not 12? why not 8? or ever? I was simply trying to contain the debate within the confines of the current system.</p>
<p>Laserp, that won’t happen. At the end of the day most people are full-pay because they can afford to be so. And it’s certainly a massive chunk and it’s not easy, but most people will go ahead and pay anyway.</p>
<p>My school is filled with fullpays that have chosen, are choosing, and will continue to choose name schools over good scholarships. A girl got a scholarship to the tune of 100k from Case Western but will choose a better school over that, and mind you CW is an excellent school! </p>
<p>I think for many parents and students who can afford to pay without going into debt it comes down to the fact that in ten years a student might always wonder “What if I had gone to XXX” but will never wonder (if not in debt) “What if I hadn’t spent XXX”. The sad truth is, and my Dad is in full agreement with you to some extent, I haven’t earned the 250k that my parents will spend and thus don’t understand the hard work that went into generating that.</p>
<p>In fact, if it was privatized as you say, many current full pays could not afford to go because the truly rich will be willing to pay obscene prices.</p>
<p>There was a time in this country when 8 was considered adequate and high school was a luxury. There were a number of outlying areas where no high school was available. When my dad was growing up, the magic number was age 16, which was kind of dumb because that cut out kids before they could graduate high school . He was raised in a Brooklyn orphanage and that was when they kicked out the kids; at age 16. He was a high school drop out for that reason, who got his college degree through the GI Bill and was an officer in the army.</p>
<p>There are now community college programs just about everywhere, using any community space available, so getting an AA degree for a price affordable to most everyone is pretty much possible. We are working our way up to the Bachelors now, and are not there yet. I know a number of areas where once you get a 2 year degree, you have to board to get a Bachelor’s. Commuting is too far and takes too much time and a car is absolutely necessary. For such situation, I would not mind additional subidies funded by tax payers for successful AA candidates to get their next two years. Not one bit. Take the federal funds from the privates to pay for it and reduce the federal funds to what it costs to commute to the nearest AA school, so that any student who gets to his/her third year of college can afford to go. But I don’t see why I have to be subsidizing a kid who lives down the road from a state school who wants to get the dorm experience miles away, or wants a private school who is using those federal funds for their own private use.</p>
<p>Most of us full pays highly over value education. It’s been that way since education first began. </p>
<p>As for financial aid, I’m very much for it. I believe the more and better educated citizens we have, the better off we will be. What distinguishes a 3rd world country from a first world country? what creates a bigger middle class? I see a strong correlation between access to education and a prosperous country.</p>
<p>This is good for all of us, whether we recieve aid or give aid.</p>
<p>And not always, Challenged, and I’m seeing more parents making choices based on cost. Someone I know well and could probably swing it, told his kid that it would really make things easier for the family if he chose Fordham with a nice grant over full pay at some privates that he preferred. I put a dollar cap on my kids colleges, though, yes, we could do it. It could really cause some damage if things went the least bit wrong, but it is doable.</p>
<p>I agree with you Challenge, the real discussion here why do we think that “a name” institution gives a better education and why are we willing to pay for it. But that is a discussion that will have as many different answers as people on this forum. It certainly costs more to operate in a large city and have famous professors. Do you learn more from a Nobel prize professor than a regular joe? Does that learning make you more ready to enter the workforce as a productive citizen?</p>
<p>CPT- which federal funds to the privates are you referring to? Pell grants? Surely you don’t want to penalize low income kids who get to use their Pell at any institution they choose. Research grants? Do you want to live in a country where the government is not at least partially funding the race to find a cure for cancer- or discover the genetic basis for MS- or funding alternative energy research?</p>
<p>Everyone loves cutting federal spending-- but really? on higher Education???</p>
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<p>What most people would say:</p>
<p>“Don’t raise my taxes one cent. Cut the government budget. But don’t cut my Medicare, Social Security, kids’ college financial aid, contracts to my business or employer, …”</p>
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I never said there will be no such people. However I think it would be difficult to fathom a situation in which everyone who could pay full aid did not pay full aid.</p>
<p>Even at the top schools about 50-60% of the students pay full-freight. It’s not reasonable to expect that they would just stop. It’s an interesting gedankenexperiment I suppose. </p>
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The point I made to begin with in my first post is that we’re not really talking about “name” schools here, as far as CC is concerned. What Harvard does, how it affects students, and its policies are largely irrelevant on a national level.</p>
<p>Yes, on all counts. If a private school wants these kids, they can meet their full need. Why should the government be subsidizing them that way? For those kids who get into the top schools, the PELL is not going to make that big of a difference in the scheme of things. Why should the money go towards living expenses? My opinion on this here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I find that it is a disgrace that someone who lives too far to commute at a reasonable cost to a state school, cannot get a degree for a reasonable price. I know kids right who are in debt to their eyebrows, PELL and all, trying to get a degree from Pitt, for instance. The tuition alone for that state school is ridiculously high and if you have to commute there, it’s insane. I’d gladly pay for those in that situation rather than picking up 10% of the cost of a private for a kid who has high need. From what I have seen a lot of those kids get close enough to thinking they can afford a high cost school that gaps them, counting the PELL and Staffords as money that the college gave them and taking out ridiculous loans that they cannot possibly afford to repay. I know a couple in that position now. $90K in debt! Parents broke. </p>
<p>There are definitely places in federal spending I would gladly cut, and places where I would gladly pay more.</p>