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These are your 'wants' not needs.
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<p>Depends how you define wants and needs. Since you refuse to explain how you define "needs," I don't see what there is to discuss.</p>
<p>We are entitled to certain rights and freedoms, we are not entitled to a cheap education from a private institution. That is why we have abundantly available public institutions that anyone of minimal ability can afford.</p>
<p>"Depends how you define wants and needs."</p>
<p>I am hungry, I need to eat ----> NEED</p>
<p>I am hungry, I need to eat at Landries -----> WANT</p>
<p>I need a car to go to work -----> NEED</p>
<p>I need a Lexus to go to work -----> WANT</p>
<p>To lskinner -- here's what you (and many others who gripe) don't seem to understand: the people in the lower 3 income quintiles who qualify for a lot of need based aid do not have much in the way of "retirement savings" . Many don't own "primary homes" either. </p>
<p>I think from the point of view of the college figuring out which of its students to subsidize, those students whose parents are sitting on a lot of home equity and healthy retirement nest egg look a lot better off than those whose parents do not have those things. To their way of looking, if the parents have been able to accumulate those assets, the parents could also have been planning for college and putting some money away in college savings plans over the same period. That is - a family that has $10K available to put into retirement plans each year could have been putting $5K into retirement and $5K into college savings over the same time frame. </p>
<p>A "fair" allocation means that the money goes to those who need it most. </p>
<p>The big gripe of affluent people who call themselves "middle class" seems to be that you want to have your cake and eat it too. You have accumulated wealth and then you resent that the colleges consider your accumulated wealth in making determinations about tuition subsidies. </p>
<p>The college financial aid system simply is NOT set up in order to ensure that the parents of colleges students have fully funded retirement plans. If you do- that is great -- but the federal financial aid system resets on the assumption that retirement is largely funded by the social security system. That may be an unrealistic fiction for those accustomed to an upper middle class lifestyle, but it makes sense in terms of how tax payer dollars are allocated. Use the social security system to fund retirement; use the financial aid system to fund college. In any case, the federal college aid system was never designed to subsidize anything more than the cost of a PUBLIC education.</p>
<p>As to the private colleges -- it is THEIR money, and I am quite sure that the biggest grants at a college that afford only need based aid are in fact going to the neediest students. The offspring of a family with $120K annual income just isn't as "needy" as the offspring of a family with $60K annual income, no matter how many expenses the $120K family has managed to rack up to support its lifestyle. </p>
<p>If I were to design a system that would be more "fair" by being more individualized -- by looking at the history of earnings over the years, personal debt, assets on hand, etc. --- I think that most of the families who complain the loudest would be even <em>worse</em> off --- because I think such a measure would show even greater disparities between the "upper" middle class and the families who are the main recipients of financial aid. That is -- if I added some sort of retirement protection allowance into the mix ... then I probably would find that neediest students at my school were even needier by comparison with the less needy -- and the upper-income families would turn out to have home equities or retirement savings in excess of whatever cap or allowance that were created in order to equalize the formulas.</p>
<p>So the real gripe is simply that the full fare tuition is too expensive. I agree -- it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that my daughter's college tuition costs 10 times as much as my sons -- though it is pretty obvious to me that her school should cost 3 or 4 times as much. However, I don't like paying $3.50/gallon for gasoline, either -- but that's what the market now says I have to pay -- at least with college I've got more choices and options. </p>
<p>Since Harvard and the other elites have no intention of lowering tuitions, it is what is is. Their definition of "need" does not now involve subsidizing upper-income lifestyles -- since the idea was and is to help "poor" students, all the formulas are based around lower-income lifestyles. </p>
<p>So no -- you don't have to move out of your primary home, but if your primary home is in a really nice neighborhood, you are going to have to figure out a way to for it other than through college tuition subsidies.</p>
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I need a car to go to work -----> NEED
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<p>But why do you need a car to go to work? Why not take the bus? Or just quit your job and stay in the local homeless shelter or live on the street?</p>
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Or just quit your job and stay in the local homeless shelter or live on the street?
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<p>This is where one can wind up in old age, if youborrow every penny of home equity, or against retiremtent, and count on social security (checks might not be in the mail since the system is broken). This is where I agree with lskinner! Then again, I am one of the middle class that is considered conveniently by some to be wealthy.</p>
<p>"But why do you need a car to go to work? Why not take the bus?"</p>
<p>There are many cities in this country where that option is not available.</p>
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There are many cities in this country where that option is not available.
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<p>Why do you need to live in one of those cities? Besides, why do you need to go to work at all? Why not just quit your job and live on the street or in a homeless shelter?</p>
<p>"Why do you need to live in one of those cities? Besides, why do you need to go to work at all? Why not just quit your job and live on the street or in a homeless shelter?"</p>
<p>Boy this brings back those good old memories....when my son was pre-school age, he would argue with similar logic.</p>
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I think from the point of view of the college figuring out which of its students to subsidize, those students whose parents are sitting on a lot of home equity and healthy retirement nest egg look a lot better off than those whose parents do not have those things.
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<p>That may be, but the reality is that many, if not most parents will not give up their house or gut their retirement savings in order to pay for their kids' college. Not only that, but financial aid is awarded on the assumption that parents will help pay. So the upshot is that for a lot of students, their actual needs will not be met -- even if you define need very narrowly.</p>
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However, I don't like paying $3.50/gallon for gasoline, either -- but that's what the market now says I have to pay -- at least with college I've got more choices and options.
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<p>Again, this is the "morals of the marketplace" argument. Please try to answer my earlier question:</p>
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To carry your analogy further though, suppose a law firm announced that nobody would be turned away based on their inability to pay; and suppose that law firm announced that it was devoting itself to serving the public and therefore was exempted from paying taxes; and suppose that law firm had billions of dollars in assets but paid no taxes on its revenues; and suppose that law firm was permitted to regularly meet with its competitors and discuss pricing strategies.</p>
<p>Now, what if the law firm's rates were sufficiently high that as a practical matter a lot of people could not afford them? Would those people have a legitimate complaint?
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many, if not most parents will not give up their house or gut their retirement savings in order to pay for their kids' college.
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But the point is that both are assets that can be borrowed against. When you borrow against them, it puts them somewhat at risk, but it does not involve giving them up or gutting them. </p>
<p>And again - you kind of miss the point. The reason that we parents who do qualify for a reasonable amount of need-based aid feel so frustrated at the complaints is that you are basically crying over the need to shelter assets that are pie-in-the-sky for us. Like... I wish I had retirement assets that were enough to make me feel secure about my future ... but all I've got is a meager IRA... AND I fully intend to borrow money to finance my kids' education.
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So the upshot is that for a lot of students, their actual needs will not be met -- even if you define need very narrowly.
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Only because you seem to have redefined "need" as something that doesn't require you to borrow money. I have yet to see a parent come onto this board complaining about the "middle class" being screwed who is also willing to sign the dotted line on a PLUS loan. Meanwhile, I'm dutifully sending off a check to Sallie Mae each month and, for obvious reasons, unsympathetic to the plight of those with fat retirement accounts. </p>
<p>And I'm not unique -- I probably have more money saved for retirement than most people with my income, and I am grateful for it. I am very much aware that the fact that I have any retirement savings at all, coupled with the fact that I am a homeowner, makes me <em>way better off</em> than many other people in my income bracket.</p>
<p>Regarding your law firm analogy: when I practiced law, I sometimes would allow poor clients to simply pay me on a weekly basis rather than give me a retainer. I'd go mostly by hunch as to which of them I trusted to stick the arrangement, but I honestly don't remember any problems with any of the ones who made the agreement. I had a good idea of how long various types of problems would take to work their way through the courts, and in the end I usually did about the same as I would have charging a low-end or reduced fee -- the type of fee I might similarly have extended as a professional courtesy to someone referred by a family member or friend. The type of weekly payments I would be getting typically would be relatively small cash payments, such as $40 or $50/week, $100/weekly at most. </p>
<p>I didn't count those as pro bono because I was paid, but the point is that even though my clients did not have a lot of money, they did have the <em>ability</em> to pay -- they just needed an extended payment plan. </p>
<p>If I was running a law firm on the premise that no one would be turned away for inability to pay, then I'd definitely have a lot of clients on extended payment plans. When Harvard speaks of "ability" to pay, they are similarly looking at a situation where some people need different terms of payment -- hence they look at overall borrowing power in the formula. Harvard promises a full ride for incomes under $60K -- and I think it is absolutely ridiculous to assert that a family earning more than $60K can't be contributing a significant amount to the education, even if not full freight -- and I don't think you are going to run into the "full pay" category for Harvard until earnings are at least twice that amount. </p>
<p>In the end, if I had a sliding-fee payment plan for a law firm, so that no needy client would be turned away, I'd end up with some sort of formula that I would use to determine need. I'd probably ask all the prospective clients for a financial statement and do some checking to verify that they weren't trying to cheat me. And I doubt that I would see a client with a 6-figure retirement fund or home equity as being all that "needy"... more likely I would start working with a finance company to help them obtain loans on favorable terms. </p>
<p>So the answer to your "hypothetical" is: Harvard is too generous with its $60K floor, but other than that I'd probably end up with a system for legal fees that looked a lot like the current financial aid system in terms of end results. Upper middle class people wouldn't qualify for many breaks, because I wouldn't see them as being "needy".</p>
<p>In my mind, the real problem is that it is now impossible for students to "put themselves through" private college. This used to be possible (myself a case in point). There is a major disconnect between the cost of private college tuition and workplace income. Parents' finances are now a major determinant of where a student will go to school, whereas this was not as much the case 30 years ago.</p>
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But the point is that both are assets that can be borrowed against. When you borrow against them, it puts them somewhat at risk, but it does not involve giving them up or gutting them.
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<p>No, that's not the point. (As a side note, I'm skeptical of your claim. In my case, if I borrowed enough money on my house to pay for my kids' college, I would probably be in foreclosure in a year or two, assuming my income didn't change.)</p>
<p>The point is that when colleges define "need" in such a way that a significant portion of parents refuse to do what the system assumes they will do, then the system is not working.</p>
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The reason that we parents who do qualify for a reasonable amount of need-based aid feel so frustrated at the complaints is that you are basically crying over the need to shelter assets that are pie-in-the-sky for us.
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<p>In my opinion, these discussions should not be a contest to see who has the sorriest lot in life. It's a matter of speaking out against something that's wrong. Look, if Bill Gates orders a 100 foot yacht and the boat company delivers a 95 foot yacht, he has a legitimate complaint. Similarly, I'm well aware that most of the "middle class" folks who complain here are probably better off than 95% of the world's population. But it doesn't change the fact that they have a legitimate complaint.</p>
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Only because you seem to have redefined "need" as something that doesn't require you to borrow money. I have yet to see a parent come onto this board complaining about the "middle class" being screwed who is also willing to sign the dotted line on a PLUS loan.
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<p>I'm not sure how student loans work for undergraduates. When I went to law school, it was possible to get government loans that covered most of the tuition and you could finagle the rest by working, living cheap, and begging money from your parents.</p>
<p>But anyway, I would guess that poor people have similar opportunities to take out student loans compared to middle class people. If so, it follows that if the "middle class" is not needy because of their ability to take out loans, the same applies to poor folks.</p>
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So the answer to your "hypothetical" is: Harvard is too generous with its $60K floor, but other than that I'd probably end up with a system for legal fees that looked a lot like the current financial aid system in terms of end results. Upper middle class people wouldn't qualify for many breaks, because I wouldn't see them as being "needy".
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<p>So does that mean that your answer to my question is "no"?</p>
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But anyway, I would guess that poor people have similar opportunities to take out student loans compared to middle class people. If so, it follows that if the "middle class" is not needy because of their ability to take out loans, the same applies to poor folks.
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<p>Agree, lskinner. This goes back to my earlier question: why give "grants" to low-income? Why don't they take the same loans as the middle-class is forced to do if they want the same choices?</p>
<p>And use the "grant" money to lower tuition for everyone.</p>
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The point is that when colleges define "need" in such a way that a significant portion of parents refuse to do what the system assumes they will do, then the system is not working.
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The colleges are full up and their financial aid numbers stay very consistent. It looks like there are plenty of parents like me who are willing to borrow to pay our EFC's.
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If so, it follows that if the "middle class" is not needy because of their ability to take out loans, the same applies to poor folks.
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Poor students are required to take out loans at all but a handful of schools. Parental EFC is calculated looking at the borrowing power of the parents -- higher income=higher borrowing power. So very poor parents have 0 EFC because they don't have enough income to support a loan. Middle classers like me are assumed to be able to make reasonable loan payments each month. </p>
<p>So that's the point: we are borrowing. </p>
<p>The only ones who are not borrowing money are the upper level people with the high EFC's who keep whining about preserving their retirement assets. I guarantee you that almost all of us ~$50K earners are looking at PLUS or home equity loans.</p>
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The only ones who are not borrowing money are the upper level people with the high EFC's who keep whining about preserving their retirement assets
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<p>If they are "whining" about this, then it is most likely because they ARE having to borrow against their retirement assets.</p>
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So very poor parents have 0 EFC because they don't have enough income to support a loan. Middle classers like me are assumed to be able to make reasonable loan payments each month.
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<p>But student loans are paid back by the students, not the parents, and they are generally deferable until after graduation when theoretically all graduates are in the same position to repay them. </p>
<p>So again, why is the middle-class student saddled with loans, but not the lower-income student?</p>
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The colleges are full up and their financial aid numbers stay very consistent. It looks like there are plenty of parents like me who are willing to borrow to pay our EFC's.
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<p>Actually, in another thread somebody posted a breakdown of the income level of families of students at Amherst College. As I recall, there was a conspicuous hole in the middle. </p>
<p>In any event, the fact that the class is full doesn't mean that the system is fair, except in a "morality of the market" sense.</p>
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Poor students are required to take out loans at all but a handful of schools.
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<p>Which schools? I believe in this thread that somebody said that Harvard is free if your family makes under $60k. Doesn't that undercut the "you're not needy because you can take out loans" argument?</p>