<p>Your later statements do not dispute my premise and so were irrelevant. Not only did I clearly state that I think you are wrong about Dartmouth “piggy-backing” on OOS increases (do you have a shred of evidence or proof for that? Not to mention that Dartmouth is about as far removed in style and character from a state school as one can get), but I never once said you didn’t have the right to call the situation appalling. Besides, I am not even sure what you are saying about the Michigans being pushed to offer the same amenities as a Dartmouth. In the first place, I am not sure people really think they will get private school amenities at a public school, just as they won’t get powerhouse football teams at Dartmouth. Second, I am not sure what the point is anyway. Dartmouth should quit improving so Michigan isn’t pushed to keep up, or Michigan should just throw in the towel and charge less because it will offer less. Kind of hard to figure where that was going, actually. But blame for what? You continue to think, apparently, that there is someone to blame because state schools charge market rates for OOS students who have paid nothing into the system to this point. Honestly, what you are saying makes no sense.</p>
<p>Just because it is an opinion does not mean it is unassailable. As I said, to express surprise at this situation after years of reporting on it is…well, surprising! To express anguish or dispepsia at an OOS school charging OOS level fees strikes me as naive. I truly don’t mean that as a personal attack. But clearly I and others have outlined the very logical and factual reasons this situation exists. If you choose to want to reject that or still feel it is “unfair”, as I said no one is stopping you. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with you or cannot point out the flaws (in our opinion) in your thinking. It seems to me, rather, that you are being emotional about it, that you want it to be like the “old days”. Well, in many ways so do I, when it comes to costs. But that ship sailed long ago.</p>
The problem with this analogy is that SOME people DO get the $100K car in spite of their poor choices. It’s not a linear relationship with colleges like it is with cars. It’s people in a certain middle range who are effectively “priced out” of the $100K car.</p>
<p>Dunno about Michigan, but back in the dark ages – when 18 year-olds became of voting age – it was super easy to earn California residency for tuition purposes. Initiallly, a student only had to pay OOS fees for one year. Then it dropped essentially to one quarter (based on interpretation that ‘residency’ could be had for as little as 30 days of being on the left coast). Thus, it was rather “easy” to send your kid OOS to a public.</p>
<p>Of course, years later, Calif and most every other state changed the residency laws such that financial independence was required.</p>
</a> Completely off point. We all know that Michigan and many other state schools spend a fortune on sports that most private schools don’t. Besides, in the decade before that the situation was reversed, with private school tuitions rising faster. With state budgets strained a decade ago in the last recession, they finally woke up to the fact that tuitions had to keep pace. The real point of this whole discussion, completely not addressed in the NY Times article, isn’t that tuitions are going up fast. That has been well documented for a long time, as I said. The point that is being discussed is that you lamented that OOS tuitions were “unfair”. Well gee. Who do you think a state legislature is going to be more inclined to put the burden upon, their constituents or those “outsiders”? As I said, private schools can do what they want, people can choose to pay the tuition or not. If public schools decide to follow (and budgets are approved by the state legislatures, btw), then they have to have the funds. If they decide not to follow to keep costs down, they risk the wrath of the people of that state regarding the school becoming second class, or worse. They wouldn’t be much of a “public Ivy” then, would they?</p>
Actually that makes it the perfect analogy, because just like in college choices some people decide to take on debt they really cannot afford either. I said I want a $100,000 car (actually I don’t, lol) but I chose not to get it because I cannot afford it and the car company won’t make it $25,000 just because of that. I know others will make a poorer choice in some cases. Short of getting an “expert race driver scholarship”, I just won’t be getting that car and will settle for the Ford.</p>
<p>Very, very, few people who are poor can afford those super-expensive colleges either. Especially OOS publics, which rarely give aid to anyone. I know that the usual shtick on this site is to pretend as if there’s amazing financial aid out there for low-income people to go anywhere they want to for free, and it’s only the poor middle class kids who have to be price conscious, but that’s an absurd lie that needs to be put to rest. The truth is that, apart from a few extremely selective colleges with huge endowments (Think Princeton here), most kids – poor and middle-class – are effectively priced out. If you have your heart set on an over-priced public school, then that’s fine, but don’t expect it to be affordable and don’t pretend that you’re being persecuted for your affluence.</p>
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<p>I agree. If you’re too good for your affordable in-state options and you have your heart set on going to an OOS public, then you either have to find the money or try to equalize your aspirations with your means.</p>
<p>Back to my earlier question…aren’t you really railing against your own instate public for not being “prestigious” enough? Why pick on Cal, Mich and UVa (which, btw, offers full need-based aid to out-of-staters) for charging premium prices for what they believe is a premium product? If your own state had such a school with such “prestige” would you even care about what others charge OOS students?</p>
<p>LOL, John. Maybe I didn’t understand what you meant by piggy-backing, I will give you that. I took it to mean that Dartmouth raised their tuition because Michigan raised theirs.
I think maybe you meant “leap-frogging”. I think you can see from the first part of that why I interpreted it as I did, although I thought it was absurd. The second part I never disagreed with. It is called competition, and there are a lot of choices out there, many much less expensive than the public Ivies. Colleges are a business, albeit unique in many aspects, and are subject to many of the same laws of the market as more ordinary businesses. However, like most markets there are high quality, lower priced alternatives. For example, take a look at many of the state Honors Colleges, some of which are quite reasonable even for OOS students, and look at Truman State in Missouri. A fantastic public LAC that is also amazingly affordable for OOS. There are dozens of other examples.</p>
<p>I have to say, you also seem to want it both ways. You want to be able to avail yourself of a top class public school, which virtually by definition means keeping up with the Harvards, but not have to pay for it, even if OOS. That really is wishful thinking.</p>
<p>I actually don’t think trying to “buy” prestige is such a great idea. That’s partly why we’re in the pickle we’re in: too many perfetly adequate colleges and universities trying to play “catch-up” in the prestige game.</p>
<p>What I’m really railing against is what I said, that we as a country have so gradually redefined what was once middle-class entitlement that it’s a little like the frog being boiled slowly: if you do it slowly enough they don’t even know enough to be “surprised”.</p>
<p>“perfectly adequate” does not equal outstanding. Are you arguing there should be no outstanding public universities? If you are not arguing that, well it takes money.</p>
<p>The middle class entitlement is still alive and well, it is just that OOS people were never entitled to it at Michigan or Berkeley, etc. They just were fortunate that it was more affordable until relatively recently, as were most of the privates. The entitlement, if you will, is that you have affordable and “perfectly adequate” in state options.</p>
<p>johnwesley - I have carefully read your posts and agree with you. </p>
<p>There is a difference in available resources between a family who earns $120,000 from ONE wage earner and a family with two $60,000 wage earners. Also family “A” is more likely to be college educated while family “B” is more likely to have first generation college students.</p>
<p>In family “A” the non-wager earner can always go get a job to pay for college expenses. If this family is supporting itself on one salary then it’s pretty easy to add another $20,000-$40,000 to it - or more. Family B is probably already stretched thin. It’s going to be difficult for them to add to their income. Think of Family “A” as having an untapped asset.</p>
<p>You are also correct about colleges spending money on “frills” to compete with the privates. Not talking about college athletics but fancy college recreational centers where all students can go a play. Our college tuition dollars are supporting playgrounds for 18-22 year olds.</p>
<p>Back in the day… one could pay their way through in-state public schools, many parents could afford oos publics and the privates were reserved for the upper middle class.</p>
<p>Note that in CT MD and NJ the Median is above $90,000. I suspect the median family income for two parent wage earners and two teenagers is significantly above $90,000 in these states.</p>
<p>To the OP - in the college world, no one really cares about the size of your mortgage. They didn’t tell you that 20 years ago though did they?
No one cares if you made $50,000 annually and just recently got a big jump in salary. They only care about what you make NOW. A family making $120,000 just doesn’t qualify for a lot of financial aid. It’s up to you to decide how much you can afford.
I suggest that you look at colleges with excellent merit scholarship and learn to love them!</p>
<p>You really have a problem with reading comprehension and analytical reasoning, John. First of all I was just using your words of middle class entitlement. The reality is that a college education isn’t an entitlement at all, obviously. The state turns down applicants from their own state all the time. So it cannot be an entitlement. But just to talk about your latest post, there are zero contradictions in my post to which you refer. Even if you use as a premise that one is entitled to a public college education, it doesn’t remotely follow that one is entiltled to it at another state’s school. Did you miss those classes on our Federal system of government in school? A state is free to set whatever price it wants for both instate and out of state tuitions. Now for instate, if they get ridiculous about it they will get voted out of office. But wait. Oh my goodness. People that live outside of that state don’t vote for those legislators. What a shock. Let me put it more simply; people that live in any state outside of Michigan are not entitled in any way, shape or form to an education at the University of Michigan. Just because Michigan happened to be more affordable to out of state people in the past has zero bearing on what the present situation is or should be.</p>
<p>Your post #76 is truly one of the most bizarre I have read in a long time.</p>
<p>BTW, you confuse opinion with fact. Saying that OOS tuition at Michigan (for example) was more affordable in the past than it is now, relative to average income, is simply a factual statement, not a shift in opinion. How obvious is that?</p>
<p>Even if I were to agree with you that the college is/should be a middle class entitlement, I’m still struggling with why you think that residents outside of California (or Michican or Virginia, or…) should be ‘entitled’ to a subsidized education at California’s universities? If such an entitlement is real, why don’t they just stay home and attend the public college/University that their parents/grandparents built for them (thru local tax dollars).</p>
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<p>Then why do you focus on ‘entitlement’ on OOS attendance to the top publics? What is wrong with your local instate public?</p>