<p>“@ bartleby, the majority of kids who come from very low income areas don’t know about government programs for people with low income. They just look at the price of college and decide there is no way for them to go, so they don’t even bother trying.”</p>
<p>You know, if you can’t be bothered to get onto google (even the poorest kids in the ghetto have internet at home now) and find financial aid programs that you can find within a minute (literally), I really question your maturity and preparedness for college. Virtually anywhere they will see the cost of college, they will see a note saying that plenty of aid options are out there. But that’s not even the situation. College counselors may be overloaded in huge, urban high schools, but they’ll make sure to give the brochure that outlines the financial aid options to kids who can benefit from it. </p>
<p>“Plus, even with the biggest government grant for low income (Pell Grant), it still only covers about 1/4 of a state u’s price tag. Even if a university costs 15k a year, 40k of debt for someone with very low income to graduate with is a tough pill to swallow.”</p>
<p>States give all sorts of grants too. And yes, working part-time through college and full time in the summers is not too much to ask when the taxpayers are giving you tens of thousands of dollars in aid, not to count the overall subsidy of state colleges. 40k of debt is an exaggeration–it can happen through poor planning, or through being middle class.</p>
<p>“Two, our population is growing. As populations grow, so does the amount of people wanting higher education.”</p>
<p>I meant percentage-wise. Obviously. </p>
<p>“One, yeah more people are going to college because it’s terribly difficult to get a job right now without a college education. There use to be three main options out of high school: college, factories, and armed services. Now, the only major option is college as our factories are gone and kids are avoiding the war. So, all of those kids that would be going to the latter two are going to be going to college. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have afforded it before, it just means that they didn’t want to go for whatever reason.”</p>
<p>That’s certainly true. As I have said before, less people should go to college than do in America. In other words, too many dumb people are going to college who cannot benefit from the things they learn there and instead, should go get jobs. The flip side of the coin is that businesses should stop obsessing over meaningless credentials for jobs that don’t really require them. Disproportionately, the dumb people going to colleges are poorer (poorer people are, in general, with plenty of exceptions, less intelligent.) In short, fewer people should go to colleges; aid shouldn’t be expanded, but perhaps targeted better.</p>
<p>What is your state, Speedo? And by no means was I presenting a case for an exceptional student. 3.2 and 1550 is not exceptional, in fact, it is doubtful whether he or she should be attending college at all.</p>
<p>Just for the record, Bartelby, low income people pay taxes too. Here in my
state they pay taxes for universities they can’t afford to go to, they are
in fact, providing a subsidy for wealthy applicants who can save a few bucks
at the taxpayers expense. The state schools here are full of wealthy people.
It’s state subsidized education for the wealthy.</p>
<p>Low income people generally use far more in services from the state than they pay into the system in the form of taxes. And in fact, due to progressive taxation and things like the Earned Income Tax Credit, low income people pay very little in taxes.</p>
<p>You know bartleby, when you have low income kids, there are often better things to do than sit on the computer and look at college info that they don’t know exists. I have a friend whose mom had her when she was 16 and then proceeded to have 6 other kids. My friend has raised all of those kids since they were born basically while her mom goes out and gets her next high. They don’t have internet in their so-called house and even if she did, she would never have time to look. She holds down two jobs and managed to graduate with a 3.8 this year from high school. She isn’t going to college because not only did she not know that there was a way for her to pay, but she didn’t have time to search. She can’t even go to a community college because she doesn’t have any mode of transportation.</p>
<p>In short, you don’t know what you’re talking about. There are plenty of kids out there that should be able to go to college but slip through the cracks. You live in a pretty sheltered world if you think everyone should magically know that aid exists if no one they know has ever gone to college and no one in their school has mentioned it.</p>
<p>sorry pal it’s a flat rate in my state, and my money subsidizes little
johnny bmw and all his fancy food tastes and the big name sports
programs and all that. I get to watch him dancing around with his
shirt off saturday afternoons on tv. And it’s my money that’s paying
the coach’s multi million dollar salary. The only way I can get on campus,
is if I pay $100 for a ticket! And their education’s the same way. The same
place where the tuition has doubled in ten years, where the profs are making
$200,000 grand a year and where the college spends millions on pr to recruit
outta state apps and sports stars. So that guys like Jay Mathews can send his
kid, if she didn’t go to Pomona, and get a sweet deal. It’s amazing, he’s
been writing that column for years and he doesn’t have a clue about low income
kids or how the system actually works. Maybe when the internet finally does in
the print biz, they can get rid of him. Maybe there’s room here at cc, he certainly
has lots of company.</p>
<p>Oh, please, as if all or most lower-income kids are taking care of their six younger siblings. Sure, there are examples where family circumstances force a poor kid to not be able to go to college–but that’s not something the state can help, other than by placing those kids into foster care, which I doubt would be an ideal solution. But either way, such cases are a small minority of what is going on. And the idea that schools don’t mention college options is flat-out false. Even the most ghetto high schools try to get a few kids into college, and guidance counselors definitely spot those kids and give them a few brochures, at the least. </p>
<p>Speedo, you seem to be a bit bitter, but you’re long on populist rhetoric and short on the facts. Whatever subsidy Johnny BMW gets is nothing compared to the social services lower-income people receive all the time from the state all across this country, including educational aid. You know who is paying for that? Johnny BMW’s family. And what is this mysterious state you live in. I’m curious, because when the details become public knowledge, maybe you won’t be so sure a bright young kid can’t afford college.</p>
<p>yes, but the wealthy kid does get that subsidy, rather than go to a 40 or 50
grand private, the rich kid puts up 25 and the state kicks in the rest. That’s
a large subsidy and once the trend - higher tuition, less aid, wealthier apps -
hits the lower level states (as it is) it’s so huge it undermines the system. I don’t
know about the federal level, certainly a couple of grand in Pells isn’t going to
make much difference, but at the state level colleges are subsidized for the
benefit of the wealthy. This year they left the privates in droves for the cheaper
deals. Unless you have super stats, there is not much hope for lower income apps
at the privates. Mathews gives one little slice of the pie, but he misses the large
picture - essentially a rapidly changing and stratifying educational system. whether
these trends are good or bad is a matter for moralists or politicians, but the trend
is clear. Access and level of access is determined largely by income</p>
<p>“yes, but the wealthy kid does get that subsidy, rather than go to a 40 or 50
grand private, the rich kid puts up 25 and the state kicks in the rest.”</p>
<p>So what? Johnny BMW will get a good job and pay taxes that not merely recoup the state’s investment in him, but subsidize the indigent for decades.</p>
<p>So what state is this you are referring to, so we can actually have a discussion based on facts, not generalizations.</p>
<p>5k in Pell grants, 5k in subsidized loans, grants from the college and the state government, plus work, and you’re close to paying for most state schools.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=bartleby]
Bullcrap. UC Riverside, a decent public university where you can get in with a 3.2 and a 1550, will give a kid whose parents make $40,000, $15,000 in grants and another $5,000 in subsidized loans that don’t have to be paid back until graduation. Although the stated cost of a UC education is around $26k, I go to a UC in a more expensive area than Riverside and make do on way less than $26k. Room, board, books, and tuition at Riverside come out to around $18-20k, and less if you move out of the dorms into a private apartment. If this poor, if middling, student works part time during the year and full time in the summer, as many do, he can leave Riverside debt-free (which is better than the case for many middle-class families taking out second mortgages to put their truly exceptional kids through Ivies.) This does not require being exceptional and getting into Harvard on a full-ride.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>This may be an option for California residents. But only 12% of United States residents live in California. Additionally, California is not representative in that it is well-known for having above average social benefits. What options exist for low-income students in the other 49 states?</p>
<p>At many state universities, tuition and fees alone cost over $10,000 per year. Books and supplies can easily cost $1,500 per year. Living expenses - room, board, transportation, and incidentals - cost at least $1,000 per month. This is increased if a car is necessary to get to off-campus employment. Thus, in many states, the COA will be well over $20,000 per year. How is a low-income student who is only offered Federal financial aid realistically able to come up with this much money?</p>
<p>Bartleby: I graduated high school with a 2.8 GPA. I have a learning disability called dyscalculia that I would have never heard of much less been diagnosed with had I not attended college. I have a 3.7 college gpa after two years and am in the process of transferring to University of Michigan, I’ve been accepted and I’ll be starting in the Fall. By suggesting that students with 2.8’s in high school do not belong in college, you are making a SWEEPING generalization about the kinds of people who make those kinds of grades. I just plain didn’t have the access to the resources I needed to have my disability diagnosed until college. I studied four hours a day, every day, on math alone. I’ve logged a solid eight hours worth of studying every day for the past six years, which is more than I can say for the average college student. There are thousands of people just like me. I have met dozens in the past year alone. My grades are great now, I am an honor student, and I am speaking at the Detroit Area Council of Teachers for Mathematics next year to teach THEM about dyscalculia so they can help future students. If anyone belongs in college, it’s me. I have sure as hell earned it.</p>
<p>I don’t know, Take3, many states have lotteries to support scholarships for deserving students. Name a state and we’ll be able to talk about the situation there. I talked about the nation’s largest state, with a huge population of low income people, since I’m from there and know it intimately. You want to talk about a different state, name it, but I know California is not alone in helping lower-income students, not necessarily the best and brightest, get their bachelor’s. </p>
<p>TwistedxKiss, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors at the University of Michigan. You ought to be congratulated on transferring there. That said, I don’t really find mentions of learning disabilities relevant. ‘Dyscalculia’ is what used to be called being bad at math. But the PC police now decree we can’t say anyone is bad at something, so they must clearly have a learning disability. The fact of the matter is that people have different innate intellectual capacities, just as they differ in their innate ability to run quickly or jump high. You did not belong at the University of Michigan with a 2.8. It is highly unlikely you would have succeeded there had you gone straight there from high school. You have since changed some approach of your educational strategy and are deemed ready to be there (of course, whether you are, I do not know.)</p>
<p>What overcoming a ‘learning disability’ most often means, as you yourself said it does in your case, is spending more effort on a task than a normal person would. It means, in the case of dyslexia, reading the same text for longer. That’s nice in college, where the professor could not care less about giving you extra time. In the real world, time doesn’t slow down. You have to complete work by deadlines established by your boss and you’re gone if you can’t do that consistently, and rightly so.</p>
<p>In my diagnosis testing, I tested in the 99th percentile in all areas except math, which was the 12th percentile. Anyone who has the slightest inkling of statistics (even me, for that matter) would argue that’s a bit more than “bad at math.” Furthermore, to suggest that dyscalculia affects nothing but ones math ability suggests nothing but ignorance to the nature of the disorder. Low ability levels in math is just one of several hundred different ways the broad range of symptoms tend to manifest. I trust the APA and WHO know more about it than you do.</p>
<p>And no, overcoming a learning disability in my case did not mean putting more effort into it, you surmised that yourself. You have also assumed I needed extra time in order to pass my courses, which is incorrect. I used no accommodations in my courses. I still managed to pass algebra and statistics well enough to be accepted to Michigan despite having a 7th grade math level as someone who has had twice as much math education as that, so it seems to me I am managing just fine.</p>
<p>No, people really do have broadly differing abilities in mathematical reasoning and other kinds of reasoning. I myself do. I just don’t go around claiming I have some made-up disorder to cover up the fact that I’m bad at math. And that’s exactly what ‘dyscalculia’ is described to be–being bad at math. That’s precisely how the DSM-IV defines it:</p>
<p>"Students with a mathematics disorder have problems with their math skills. Their math skills are significantly below normal considering the student’s age, intelligence, and education.</p>
<p>As measured by a standardized test that is given individually, the person’s mathematical ability is substantially less than you would expect considering age, intelligence and education."</p>
<p>Of course, the definition is problematic–‘somebody is dyscalculic if he is worse at math than his intelligence would suggest him to be’–when intelligence itself is partially a function of mathematical ability, but that’s what happens when science and politics mix. </p>
<p>And if I ‘surmised’ anything, it’s from the fact that you claim to have studied for four hours a day on math, every day. That’s an unusual amount of effort for someone to pass basic algebra and statistics. </p>
<p>I don’t know what you’re arguing, but it certainly makes no sense. You did well in JC or wherever you went before UM and got into UM, all is well with the world. What are you complaining about?</p>
<p>I agree, undecided. What was the purpose of this article, to make people believe that the cost of education these days is fine? That no one is suffering under the oppressive costs of college? They are.</p>
<p>It was to convince people that there are many problems with college education in America, but lack of accessability for intelligent kids is not one of them, as is so often claimed. You hear all the time about how people can’t afford to go to college, but the truth is quite different usually.</p>
<p>Interesting that Mr. Mathews, who by his own admission doesn’t really understand financial aid – his wife handled all the financial stuff for their kids’ college education – is writing on it. </p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes, your friend sounds like a great candidate for Mr. Mathews’s challenge! Perhaps he can help her find the funding she needs to go to college.</p>
<p>bartleby, re: learning disabilities, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously, don’t even try; you discredit yourself with each post.</p>
<p>TwistedxKiss, congratulations on UMichigan!</p>
<p>bartleby–a high school sends “a few” students to college and you think that’s ok? That’s fair & equitable?</p>
<p>This ghetto HS is Fine! We sent 3 kids to college last year!!! And we told 3 others about college but they didn’t go!</p>
<p>Getting kinda off topic, but in some areas the system (socio-economic AND educational) is so broken that telling a HS senior that college is possible for them is–too little, too late.</p>
<p>I believe he is right. The “gifted & motivated” student who can’t attend is a straw man. The ones who are really hurting are the mass of students who could do well in college if they had 1) a good suburban HS education 2) parents who cared and had money to send them.</p>