<p>In Scarsdale, NY, the percentage is close to 100% for kids going directly to college and the vast majority of them will be going away to school. Go next door to Yonkers, and the story changes. Go a little further down into the Bronx and the story changes even more. Further south to Hunters Point in the South Bronx, and it’s a whole other story. You won;t have driven more than 20 minutes on a day without heavy traffic.</p>
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It would be fairer to simply lower the tuition to something closer to the average net cost, and let people have some transparency up front about what the cost will be.</p>
<p>The savings % is 5.6% over asset protection allowance. What you get for saving is flexibility in that you have that money for any number of choice. Very few students get full need met anyways so it’s often a moot point. Yes, those who saved and whose kids got into one of these full need met, no loans schools, pay more than those who did not, but it’s one of those tiny niches. More often than not, the savers’ kids get to go to a college that the non savers’ kids don’t. I don’t know how many posts I read on this board where the parents and kids actually have ZERO money for college. They are living at 100% + of their income and have NOTHING saved, and they are not getting a flood of money rushing towards them They are desperately looking for loans that they are likely not going to be able pay back since present and past are heavy indicators of the future. So those who save are getting that benefit of having done so. They have more flexibility and choices. </p>
<p>Also a lot of people, I’ve come to find out, did not necessarily save all of that money. My generation is inheriting their parent’s money as they die. Not a nice thing to bring up, but yes, it’s there.</p>
<p>Just to clarify–“going away” didn’t mean going several states away, it meant living on campus. Most kids I knew when to school in the contiguous states to our home state but everyone lived on campus. No, the entire country as a whole does not have a high rate of college degrees but if you run that number for people that are 30-60, that percent is a lot higher. There are some areas of the country that the percent is going to be very low and others where it will be very high but in our area, most people go on to college after high school–90+% in most of the suburban areas especially.</p>
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It would make a good plot for a movie: Underfunded college applicant pays hitman to knock off rich granny so he can go to posh out-of-state school.</p>
<p>Oh wait, the Menendez brothers already did that to their parents…</p>
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<p>PA and IL pretty much work that way. The state flagships do not offer much financial aid, so that you pretty much know what the price will be. Of course, the in-state price of those schools is not affordable to middle or lower income families (even with the measly amounts of financial aid offered).</p>
<p>Of course, now that net price calculators are on college web sites, financial aid is more transparent than it used to be.</p>
<p>The cost of every college is on their website–that is what it costs to go there. If you are lucky enough to get merit or financial aid to lower your cost, great. I fail to see where the lack of transparency is in this. If you don’t get merit aid or financial aid and still can’t afford to go to schools on your list, you didn’t do your homework well enough in the beginning of the process.</p>
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<p>Of course, “middle class” in the context of these forums usually means a very high income level (e.g. “middle class but will not get financial aid anywhere”).</p>
<p>In the US, typical educational attainment by the late 20s is that about third will have completed bachelor’s degrees, while another tenth will have completed associates degrees. So an area where “everyone is expected to go to college” is not likely to be a typical middle class area if we assume that the actual middle class in the US is large enough to include the great majority of people.</p>
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It’s not so transparent; otherwise, there would not be so many threads complaining that the FA being offered is not in line w what the net price calculators predict.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus----we’ve had this discussion before. Your understanding of “middle class” is flawed. It’s not an equal proportion to the upper and lower class. Our area is solidly middle class for our state. Even though pretty much everyone we know had a college degree, cost of living is high which keeps most people in a middle class lifestyle. We have about 95% of of our HS grads go on to college. It is what it is. People here would be poverty level in some parts of the country and very upper class in others if they kept their same wages…</p>
<p>GMTplus7–it is transparent if they read the CDS. I was helping someone look at colleges and they ran the NPC and came up with a good number–however, a quick look at the CDS showed that only a small percent of their students actually got close to their need–less than 50%. Financial aid is what it is. Also, how accurate are the numbers people are putting in for the NPC? The information is out there and easy to find for almost every school in the country.</p>
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Your community’s data is not representative of the rest of the country.</p>
<p>According to the 2010 Census data, D.C. & MA have the highest percentage of college graduates, at 68.8% & 54.3% respectively. The national average is 39.3%
[New</a> State-by-State College Attainment Numbers Show Progress Toward 2020 Goal | U.S. Department of Education](<a href=“U.S. Department of Education”>U.S. Department of Education)</p>
<p>^^like I said earlier–some parts of the country are going to have higher rates than others…but most of those states have projected numbers hovering around 50%…which is higher that previously stated in this thread.</p>
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<p>Sounds like an upper income bubble area, where high spending makes people feel not as wealthy as their income would otherwise indicate.</p>
<p>^^^not even close but you can assume all you want…</p>
<p>Defending SteveMA on this one: here in Massachusetts, you practically need a master’s degree to get a job as a barista. In some parts of the country, you can get a nice office job with a GED or a high school diploma; out here, a bachelor’s is practically a requirement for any office job.</p>
<p>Anyone who knows their history can tell you that it used to be a sign of wealth to attend school until age 18. This happened even with free school in many parts of the country; parents wanted the kids to work. Once a high school diploma became a requirement for many jobs, finishing high school became a normal thing, not a rich-people thing. Likewise, here in Massachusetts, you need a bachelor’s degree to get a job. By analogy, it’s not a rich-people thing.</p>
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Um, is it a shock to anyone that some areas cost more to live in than others, and often for good reason? People in San Francisco make more than those who perform the same jobs in Missouri, but we don’t get all condescending towards the San Fran folks for “living beyond their means”. Cost of living, and corresponding salary differences, isn’t exactly something to get worked up over.</p>
<p>On the other hand, those people who live in areas in the San Francisco area where 95% of high school graduates go to college do realize that they are not “merely middle class”.</p>
<p>UCB: for heaven’s sake - do you know anything about the Boston area? Really, do you?</p>
<p>Picking a town at semi-random: Woburn, Massachusetts. It’s where the famous movie “A Civil Action” was set*, is about ten miles north of the city, has a good commercial base, great athletic teams, and a very solid high school. Over 70% of high school grads go on to college, i.e. about twice the national average; the average household income in the town is $54,897, according to Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Oh, the rich-richie-riches of fifty-four grand a year! A whole three thousand above the national average! It gets even more egregious when you look at family income - sixty-five grand a year! It’s amazing that the streets aren’t paved with gold.</p>
<p>We can keep this up, if you would like. I’ll pick out thoroughly middle-class towns in the Boston suburbs (excluding Andover, Weston, etc.), we’ll look at the median household income, and then look at how many people go to college. It’ll be a really fun game - fun for me, because I’m competitive and I like winning.</p>
<p>*I thought I would go for the most well-known, non-uber-rich suburb; we can pick others.</p>
<p>Burlington, MA, which is right next to Woburn, is an even better example: over 90% go to college, and the median household income is $86,000 per year. Now, that’s a lot better than the national average, but it would also be middle-class in any area of the country. </p>
<p>Pick any town on or between the 128 and 495 corridors and you’ll find that even the middle-class towns send 70% to 95% of their graduates onto college - and I’m defining “middle class” as “median income in the five figures”.</p>