<p>I think the University of California should charge MORE, and focus its financial aid based on need and merit. This is a superb educational institution, and should charge what it is worth! There is no reason that CA taxpayers should subsidize middle and upper middle class families who send their kids to the UC’s. UC should get smart and follow the lead of other state institutions who attract smart OOS kids who can pay. (For perspective, I received my BA from UCSC and my MBA from Berkeley, and my D goes to UCLA).</p>
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<p>Yes. Not everyone is a big fan of debt bondage, which is often what you’re facing if you try to adopt a “need-blind” approach to picking colleges when you don’t actually have the money for it in your hand. And student loan debt is the worst kind of debt imaginable; it’s like the syphilis of the financial world. You have to pay it off fairly quickly or else it’ll fester and grow until it infects every other aspect of your life, forcing you to take majors that you’re not interested in, because you’re more likely to get a job right out of high school and pick crappy jobs that will help you out with tuition reimbursement. I’ve even seen threads on here where people are uncomfortable with letting their kids marry someone with a lot of student loan debt, which means that your dream school might poison your relationship with your in-laws too.</p>
<p>Of course, there are lots of benefits to chasing your dream school and I’m not saying that debt should be the only consideration, but it’s just flat-out wrong to suggest that there’s something wrong with settling for a good school that you can afford instead of contracting financial-syphilis.</p>
<p>My point is that if a student chooses to, they can attend any school they want to. There are all kinds of loans, grants, merits, and scholarships to make that possible. However, it is the student’s choice to make to deal with the aftermath when the fire dies down and eventually time will come to pay back that loan. That is the student’s own choice to not attend, not because they were forced to go to a cheaper school because the money wasn’t available to them to attend a more expensive school. Point being, money is always available, it’s just the aftermath that people take into account and decide on a school because of financial reasons.</p>
<p>“My point is that if a student chooses to, they can attend any school they want to. There are all kinds of loans, grants, merits, and scholarships to make that possible.”</p>
<p>and my point is that your statement just isn’t true!</p>
<p>I agree with speedo. Money isn’t always available or comes with too high a price. For instance, attending dream school by taking out $80 k in loan would be stupid because paying back that money after graduation would be difficult and would severely limit ones lifestyle options.</p>
<p>There are not enough scholarships to provide aid to everyone who needs it.</p>
<p>And there’s actually a limit to how much loans most people are even able to borrow.</p>
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<p>Except that it is the tax dollars of those middle and upper class families that are paying to fund the UC system</p>
<p>Here in Pa, where we have a flat state income tax, it’s the tax dollars of all incomes that fund the state school system. And eventually, as costs rise and more and more low income and middle class families are denied access, the local state reps will start to hear about it from their constituents. This situation doesn’t just affect inner city families or minority kids, lower income whites in rural areas face the same “access” dilemma. We have now established a multi tier system based primarily on income. As that trend continues the pressure will mount for the legislature to do something about it, or at least direct the money towards the schools that most people attend. In Pa, it’s a fair question to ask why we still fund PSU, main campus, and a question the Governor has already asked.</p>
<p>"Except that it is the tax dollars of those middle and upper class families that are paying to fund the UC system "</p>
<p>Also if they make going to UC expensive for higher income families they stand to lose some of these students to out of state colleges opening the door to a brain drain to other states.</p>
<p>Unless we can make sure that out of state colleges’ costs outstrip that of the UCs.</p>
<p>Maybe the California government can offer some sort of deal with neighboring states to get them to divert money from their school systems to gigantic prisons.</p>
<p>“brain drain” is already happening, Penn has already reported a large increase in CA apps.</p>
<p>It seems to me that raising prices in a recession only makes college more inaccessible. It’s gonna hurt out-of-staters, like myself, than in-staters, but it’s still a lot.</p>
<p>As a CA resident with no chance of qualifying for need-based aid for my daughter, it is cheaper (or at least very close) for her to go out of state with merit aid … sad but true</p>
<p>There are more California kids at Indiana University than you would think. Many of the families don’t even care about the merit scholarships, but if your child qualifies for the top one, tuition and cost of attendence is close to UC.</p>
<p>Whoooweeee. My College Illinois prepaid tuition plan is tied to increases in the average tuition in Illinois(all public colleges in IL). What a winner that plan turned out to be…automatic inflation adjustments and increases when you need it.</p>
<p>If publics were any smarter, they should salvage this by offering affordable tuition to the many students who cannot afford privates. In essence, they’d be stealing a lot of gifted minds because of cost issues and works in favor for publics. In-state publics could REALLY benefit from this…if only if only…</p>
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All very true. And it was decades before I figured out how I shortchanged myself in so doing. A comparison of D’s qualitative college experience and mine is staggering, all to her benefit. </p>
<p>Admittedly, a large part of the difference is attributable to the difference between a large research U (a “mid” UC, AAU member) and a Top 20 LAC.</p>
<p>50isthenew40, is your name a comment on age or the cost of attending college?</p>