<p>"Instead, places like Harvard seem to promote the fiction that money should not be a bar to attending. And they apparently do give reasonable financial aid to a few lucky lower class people to help promote their BS. Which is basically a slap in the face to everyone else."</p>
<p>No the reality is that there is a expectation mis-match. People on their own decide on a number that they believe they 'deserve' from a school. The professionals at fin-aid office decide in their professional judgement what is 'expected' of you. You don't want to believe in their analysis, you don't want to make any additional changes in your life style and hence the frustrations.</p>
<p>Also don't forget that there is difference in AGI derived from W-2 and small buisiness or self-employed person.</p>
<p>In many cases people 'assume' that all schools are obligated to pay anything beyond their FAFSA or Profile EFC, or that they are 'entitled' to get full aid beyond EFC. Not all schools meet 100% of the need.</p>
<p>By the way I am sympathetic to the fact that middle class have a harder time to pay for expensive colleges. But I don't agree with the title of the thread.</p>
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The professionals at fin-aid office decide in their professional judgement what is 'expected' of you.
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<p>And what is "expected" is frequently unreasonably and unrealistically high. To the point where a lot of decent parents flat out refuse to pay it and their children are left in the lurch.</p>
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You don't want to believe in their analysis, you don't want to make any additional changes in your life style and hence the frustrations.
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<p>It depends what lifestyle changes you are talking about. Most decent parents would be perfectly happy to forego vacations or a new car to send their children to college. But what about lifestyle changes like gutting one's retirement savings and selling one's house? That's unreasonable in my opinion.</p>
<p>But whatever your opinion is, as a practical matter, colleges must know that if they set tuition that high, a significant fraction of parents will refuse to pay and the effect will be that money concerns will have barred the child in question from attending. </p>
<p>How much is that fraction? 5%? 10%? 50%? At a certain point, colleges are lying if they imply or suggest that they fully meet peoples' financial needs. My impression is that we are way past that point.</p>
<p>At a minimum, it would mean enough financial aid so that the vast majority of decent parents will not refuse to make their expected contributions.</p>
<p>"At a minimum, it would mean enough financial aid so that the vast majority of decent parents will not refuse to make their expected contributions."</p>
<p>Are you talking about a number from FAFSA or Profile?</p>
<p>See p. 36, "College Affordability": "...even after deducting financial aid, the net college cost for low- and middle-income families to send their child to a public four year college or university demand over half (52%) of their annual family income."</p>
<p>yblake7 - too true about kids not being aware of costs. About 12 years ago I sat and talked to a girl who went to a very nice private girls school here in the northeast. we were in the 3 acre yard, in front of the beauiful home her dad had built. now worth a few million a least. (not far from the NJ hunt country, Jackie-o area) I asked about the type of kids in her high school and she said - oh almost everyone is just regular middle class kids like me. just a few rich kids.
The flip side of the story is she works in a hardcore inner city with young children and is an extraordinary young lady.</p>
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But ... this kind of upward mobility happens far less often than most of us realize. Today, we not only have less mobility than we did 20 years ago, but we also have less than in most other developed countries. Indeed, there is now less economic mobility in the United States than in France, Germany, Denmark, and a whole host of other European nations. ...</p>
<p>Why...? Principally because of education ? or more precisely, the lack thereof...</p>
<p>President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the 89th Congress made a solemn promise to America?s young people in 1965. ?Tell them,? said the President, ?that the leadership of your country believes it is the obligation of your Nation to provide and permit and assist every child born in these borders to receive all the education that he can take.?
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<p>France: the unemployment rate recently fell to below 9%. Only 9% of the people who want a job can't find one. Unless you're a young adult. Then the unemployment rate shoots up around 25%. Basically, this tells me a French person is twice as likely to end up unable to support him/herself than an American.</p>
<p>That is mobility?</p>
<p>By the way, George W. Bush has spent more money on non-military non-entitlement spending than anyone since... Lyndon B. Johnson! Federal funding of education has doubled (and its still a small fraction of what the states and local governments pay.) </p>
<p>Inflation is up and gas prices are up, isn't this familiar?</p>
<p>You also didn't mention that there are federal grants available that more than double the pell grant for students who major in critical need areas like science and education.</p>
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effectively blocking access for thousands of aspiring college students from lowincome families.....
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<p>Then how is it we have more students in college than ever before? We have more students in college than we have in high school.</p>
<p>The vast increase in the number of people with college degrees has had the unintended consequence of creating barriers to advancement for many poor people. A college degree per se is no longer a ticket to a good white collar job with a future. Instead, the lack of such a degree now makes it very difficult to obtain such a job. Combine that with the decline in the quantity and relative quality of manufacturing jobs, and you have the recipe for an hourglass society.</p>
<p>I think some of the upset comes from consumer-driven, brand madness going on now. We live in a world where so folks pay 100,000 for a car-on down to my cute 2,500 dollar bomb. I think people are trying to tie colleges to the same kind of value system, with US news raking in bucks over that need to rank, rate, compare. I think we forget they (colleges) all have the same basic chassis, and often the same driving system. (ie the professor at the CC, the third tier school and harvard all have a PhD). Each car will take you to your new job. you may arrive asap in your mercedes, or need to trade up till you can get one, but there ya are.
The OP and many others are mixing up too different situations. The junk car (community college) and the mercedes (ivy -can we not capitialize them!) get you to the same place - maybe one is slower but you get there. The difference is both speed and comfort. One may get you the primo job faster, and it's a cushier ride.
Also, in our case, I suspect that to a certain extent the (need and merit) packages reflect how much the child is wanted by the school, and that kids are sort of reach, match and safety for the school.</p>
<p>So.. the poor are screwed because more people than ever have a degree? Sorry, that doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, the standard for education is higher, but isn't that the goal?</p>
<p>If you want to glamorize the manufacturing standard of living, you can go back in time or visit a country that is dependent on such un-educated labor. Here's a hint, they won't have iPods and computers everywhere, and I REALLY doubt they have half the opportunity to go to college as Americans do..</p>
<p>The point is that members of some socioeconomic classes find it much more difficult to obtain a college education than others, and that in a society where a degree is increasingly a filtering device for good jobs, members of that group are placed at a great disadvantage.</p>
<p>OK, so its tougher for a poor person in America to go to college than it is for a rich person. You don't have to convince me of that, its written into the very definition of the terms. Is it tougher for a poor person in America to go to university than a poor person in China or Europe? Absolutely not. Is it more expensive? Yes, demand always increases price, but there is no shortage of community colleges, loans, and federal grants (especially if one majors in a high demand field.)</p>
<p>Is it tough for an American, regardless of education, to get a job? No. Not by any international standard. (OK, you can argue that it could be easier, but you will be out of luck if you want to point of an example of a place where it <em>is</em> easier.) A full-time job at minumum wage in America is in the top 13% of global wealth. A 'low-typical' job for a degree holding person at 30,000 a year puts one in the top 7%. <a href="http://www.globalrichlist.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.globalrichlist.com/</a></p>
<p>If that isn't worth the investment of a public university or community college, even at the cost of loans, I don't know what is.</p>