<p>Don't know if anyone else has posted this link yet.<br>
The article analyzes the fallout from the Ivies' new financial aid policies.</p>
<p>College</a> Guide: Financial Aid for the Middle Class | Newsweek Kaplan College Guide | Newsweek.com</p>
<p>There's some kind of shell game at work here. For the family that was profiled, with an income around $90,000, they will be paying $13,000 next year. The same article states that families with incomes of $120,000 are expected to pay 10%, with the percentage decreasing down to $60K and then eliminated.</p>
<p>Is anyone else having trouble with the math here? Why is the profiled family paying $13,000 and not less than $9,000? </p>
<p>A poster on the Princeton forum seemed to have the same kind of question. Descriptions of the new financial aid policies seem fairly straightforward. Plug the numbers into the calculators, and the results are not what you'd expect.</p>
<p>It surprises me that colleges would be alarmed over another school's generous policy. No one seems to have complained that Cooper Union or Olin are causing problems. There are still only so many seats at schools with high endowments and a growing student population.</p>
<p>^Maybe it is because Olin still costs 17,093 (not far off the mark from flagships before scholarships) to attend. Cooper Union is one small school with just 1000 students. Now that more these upper tier schools have reduced costs and/or eliminated student loans in FA packages, it hurts. At some point, families earning 120,000 or 150,000, or even 200,000 cannot pay 30k+, 40k, 50k+ price tags any longer. There is no price freeze insight. Where does it end?</p>
<p>"There is no price freeze insight. Where does it end?"</p>
<p>It ends the way all financial bubbles end -- One day a trader asks $147 for his barrel of oil and hears only silence. Five weeks later oil is selling for $111, down twenty five percent. </p>
<p>One day there will be a similar accounting in higher education. Perhaps it will triggered by a Sallie Mae payback schedule, or by employers deciding they're better off hiring HS graduates than paying ever-increasing salaries for college graduates.</p>