<p>Actually, no, it’s not a complete fabrication. In major urban centers, they don’t really exist any more thanks to outreach programs, but go somewhere rural. You don’t even have to head in to rural MS. Rural IL will do. There are smart kids with high scores and the educational foundation to do well at an elite there who decide that the local directional is good enough and don’t consider some top schools that they can get in to (and for some career paths, that’s true, but not so much for others, and if they head to the directional, the chances that they’d find career possibilities they hadn’t considered before open up before them are lesser). </p>
<p>It seems to me that you can’t evaluate affordability without taking graduation rates, and speeds, into account. The costs stated are per year. If it takes 6 years to graduate, that drives up the costs by 50%. If some students don’t graduate at all, they may have thrown the money away. A college degree for $30,000 is a far better deal than a bunch of credits and no degree for $10,000.</p>
<p>Though a lot of that is student-dependent, not school-dependent. Yes, some schools have classes that fill up soon so that kids can’t graduate no matter how hard they try, but that seems more rare than kids having to stay longer because they switch majors a bunch or other reasons.</p>
<p>@Hanna You’re ignoring true opportunity cost of taking longer to graduate. Not only are you paying tuition, you miss out of employment. One or two years of entry level pay can total well over $100k</p>
<p>Probably the biggest reasons are those relating to student underpreparedness for college, such as not being able to handle full course loads, needing remedial courses, or needing to repeat failed courses. That four year graduation rates tend to track admission selectivity points to this reason.</p>
<p>Another likely reason is that some poorer students need to work a lot to afford school, but that means taking course loads on the low end of “full time” (i.e. 12 credits instead of 15 or 16), resulting in needing 10 instead of 8 semesters’ worth of course work to graduate.</p>
<p>Using 4 year graduation rates vs. 6 year rate can distort the data (especially for lower SES students).</p>
<p>Lets look at Number 9 on the list, Susquehanna University.</p>
<p>It’s 25% Pell, with an average net price of $18,000 a year. It’s 4 year graduation rate is 75% and 6 year grad rate is 77% (for students who begun in 2005, the 2007 rates are lower at 71% and 75%, so they must be using 2005, since the cutoff is 75%). </p>
<p>At the University of Florida (which I’m most familiar with, but several other public’s would have similar or better numbers)</p>
<p>It’s 29% Pell, with an average net price of $8,466. It’s 4 year grad rate is 65.7%, it’s **5 year graduation rate is 84.02%<a href=“UF%20makes%20this%20info%20available”>/b</a> and it’s 6 year rate is 86.5%. </p>
<p>A “Pell” student would find UF much more accessible ($8K vs $18K). A student at UF would, on average, be 10% more likely to graduate, though it could take them a 5th year. </p>
<p>UF is significantly better at cost and % Pell, has a better overall graduation rate, but it doesn’t make the list while Susquehanna is in the top 10. </p>
<p>It’s one of the more bizarre drawbacks of the “high sticker price, high financial aid” business model adopted by most, if not all, the highly selective schools is that it scares off the very families it was meant to attract. The more polls we have like the NYT accessibility ranking and the Washington Monthly poll (with all its faults), the more the word gets out that the net cost to the families is a more important benchmark than the sticker price.</p>
<p>Some highly-selective schools really do want to attract low-income students. Others say they do more than they actually do. In reality, all but a handful of schools require a certain percentage of full-pays to make the finances work.</p>
<p>Its a very complex matrix. Its very true that there is a “shortage” of high SAT pell grant type student out there. Its very true also that many colleges are dependent on tuition revenues to make their annual budgets (they dont have huge endowments making millions on investments), and they need a certain percentage of full pay students in the mix. And finally, there is a direct relationship between wealth and high SAT’s and GPA’s, if not “afford to pay for a counseling coach” who has connections with the admissions officers at the uber elite schools and Ivy League. </p>
<p>But what to do about all of this? That is the conundrum faced by everyone. Do we soak the rich and give handouts to the poor? I would suggest, humbly, that the middle class has been the group most detrimentally affected by a lot of the rise in tuition, the emphasis on student loans for “so called financial aid” and the push to become more “diverse” admitting kids on “scholarship” through defacto affirmative action plans, but who may (not necessarily, however) have lower scores than some not offered scholarships. The rich can afford to pay full price, but often get the lion’s share of scholarships because they have the best scores (often at private schools and with a great deal of tutoring and coaching going on). Further, SAT scores dont measure EFFORT. That is a fools errand. They measure skills…some of them learned and some of them innate intelligence. Do we “punish passively” those kids who don’t have the genetic gifts or money for private coaching? Or whose schools aren’t as focused on producing high SAT scores (some private schools and in some states like New Jersey where some public schools TEACH to the SAT test)? </p>
<p>Life isnt fair. It never has been and never will be. Life is hard. Its frustrating and vexing and often downright intentionally unfair. Our kids need to learn this up front at an appropriate age, not to give up and quit and roll over. But to learn how to accept disappointment and denial with determination and grace under fire. </p>
<p>I also acknowledge there are few other measures out there objective enough to give colleges a method to determine merit for scholarships. No alternatives. GPA s are too subjective and an A at one school is not the same as an A in another school. </p>
<p>Colleges compete for the best and brightest because they use avg SAT scores and GPAs as marketing tools to continue their elitism. The ones at the top dont want to share the wealth so to speak. I wish it were different and everyone was on an even keel and awarded grants in financial aid based on need and there was no such thing as this mythic merit scholarship. I get tired of parents of privilege suggesting their kids worked harder and deserve more. NOT! Some kids work their behinds off to the point of tears and great stress just to get the grades they got and even the SAT scores they got. Its not a question of effort. And some people cant afford the private tutors and SAT coaches as stated above. And some kids are born with a knack for standardized testing and others are more reflective and creative. It is what it is.</p>
<p>So I tell people to accept the numbers, be content and then find the best MATCH school for them…where they will be happy, excel in college, and then get out there in the working world and make a difference. Chasing money and chasing prestige is an endless game and leads to all sorts of problems and sometimes tragedy. </p>
<p>I recommend to people the link that I posted, since it is one of the most cited studies on this. It has some interesting information that is not intuitive. For instance, the authors estimate that only 3.6% of their pool of high achieving students (of all income levels) come from families where the parents are high school graduates or less. Only 15.2% of them come from families with parents having less than a bachelors degree.</p>
<p>This is pretty interesting stuff.</p>
<p>It shows that a lot of the high achieving low income students are coming from lower income families where there is already a bachelors degree, for instance. Even if you assume that the lower educational levels are stacked at the lower income quartiles, it means that the bottom two income quartiles of high achieving students have a lot of college educated people in them. Its not the stereotype of the coal miner from Kentucky.</p>
<p>They also point out that the racial affirmative action programs won’t make a big dent in the income diversity spectrum, which the graphs show.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I think their showing the graphs of the family education of the students undermines their case and the stereotypical family that people think they are talking about when they talk about lower income students. If your parents went to college, you’re not disadvantaged, even if your income is lower. The chart shows that the entire second quartile of income could be college educated.</p>
<p>The charts also put the lie on the idea that SAT scores are correlated with income. </p>
<p>Dadx, aren’t myths hard to die. All they need is suspect data and the blind acceptance of general opinions. The data used most often to support the correlation with income is the self-reported income by SAT takers. We expect kids to know the details of the finances of the parents. </p>
<p>Smaller samples are painting a different story. Asians are reporting higher scores. Yet, they are also are routinely the largest beneficiaries of welfare programs and Pell grants. Analyzing Cal’s correlation of Pell grantees and SAT scores might be surprising. The correlation to the local environment and academic offerings in that offering are a different story. Look at the example of Stuy in New York. What is the correlation to income to test scores? And one could also look at how lower income students do when they obtain a scholarship to attend a prestigious private K-12. One should look at the services provided to purported lower income schools in general, and not at the individual levels of income. Place rich kids in such mediocre environment with the same teachers, and chances are that the correlations to income would be different. A reminder of the Murphy-Aykroyd movie Trading Places.</p>
<p>If you are interested in the research of Avery, you might look at his work on the impact of diffusion of information about selective colleges to lower income students. We tend to focus on grades and scores as impediments to aspire at better schools. And finances, obviously. The reality is that many are never told or shown that the true possibilities of aiming higher, or told … Si, se puede. </p>
<p>Parents are a greater determinant than teachers. Place rich kids in a mediocre environment, and you’d still see a relationship with income because their parents wouldn’t have changed.</p>
<p>There’s also a selection bias when you look at poor kids in selective prep schools. They’re not exactly a random sample.</p>
<p>“Elite means you’re in tune, informed, assertive. There’s a computer in every home. There’s internet access at every school.”</p>
<p>In Appalachia? But I do agree with the point that dedicating effort to “raise the tide” for the average student in STL/Chicago/Detroit et al is probably more worthwhile than dedicating effort to obsessing over phantom diamonds in the rough, which is absolutely more worthwhile than worrying about how someone who “deserved” MIT has to slum it at CMU.</p>
<p>“more rare than kids having to stay longer because they switch majors a bunch or other reasons.”</p>
<p>Okay, but given that some schools have far higher rates than others of graduates taking 5-6 years, you have to suspect that either the kids are coming in underprepared and need to retake classes, or the school isn’t doing a good job offering counseling and support so that the kids can finish on time.</p>
<p>Isabella…internet access does not mean that kids, or their parents know that elite schools are accessible to them. My daughters suburban school didn’t tell them anything other than go to UGA, maybe Alabama or Auburn. This wasn’t a backwoods school, the county that it is in was the 17th wealthiest county per capita in the country when my daughter was applying to schools. I just happened upon CC and my D left the southern bubble…but to assume those that didn’t aren’t “elite” material is just stupid and snobbish. Many kids from my area are “elite” type kids…they just don’t seek out the glorified NE schools. They choose to stay here, doesn’t make them stupid or uninformed.</p>
<p>Not necessarily even in highly urban environments like NYC. </p>
<p>I have given away dozens of computers over the last 10+ years to low-income folks including NYC area students whose families could barely keep a roof over their heads and themselves fed. </p>
<p>No, ma’am. Not every household has a computer…much less internet access. </p>
<p>“Isabella…internet access does not mean that kids, or their parents know that elite schools are accessible to them. My daughters suburban school didn’t tell them anything other than go to UGA, maybe Alabama or Auburn. This wasn’t a backwoods school, the county that it is in was the 17th wealthiest county per capita in the country when my daughter was applying to schools.”</p>
<p>I live in an upper middle class suburban area of Chicago. At the high school my kids go, very few kids are interested in tippy top schools – aside from a few whose parents attended such schools or whose parents lived / grew up elsewhere (such as the east coast) or for those who are athletic recruits. At the high school one town over, elite schools are very much on everyone’s mind – it’s an entirely different mindset. I think if you’re not sophisticated enough to have traveled outside your home region, you tend to think that the colleges that are big there are big everywhere. I certainly thought that when I lived on the east coast and didn’t know any better - I assumed that because Penn and Princeton were on my radar screen, that they’d be on every smart kid’s radar screen, and that state schools were for the “average” - well, lo and behold, here in the midwest, the better state schools aren’t “for the average” and are highly regarded. Isabella, I do hope you’re not one of the provincial; it would be a shame if you were.</p>
<p>@Hanna: You have to separate out the schools where co-op is done by a good percentage of students from the rest as well. Obviously, the co-op schools would have far lower 4-year graduation rates, but that wouldn’t tell you much about how good the education is.</p>
<p>Also, longer graduation times usually have more to do with money than underpreparedness, as poorer kids have to go part-time some of the time and work to pay for school. Do you believe that denying them admission is a better course of action?</p>
<p>Lots of factors cause the lower 4 year (vs. 6 year) graduation rates. In additional to student preparedness and resources, you do have to take into account money.</p>
<p>True, many students will work a part time job to help pay for college as well as doing co-ops. However, you also have to take into account that the lower yearly cost (at Public’s), allow students to feel less pressure to graduate. I remember my best friend, at the beginning of his final semester, being marched into the dean’s office for not taking a required class for graduation. He didn’t sign-up for it, because he wanted to spend more time in college. She wasn’t amused. For the rest of the semester, till his grades where finalized, he would spend a lot of quality time in the Deans office.</p>
<p>In addition, while Public universities may not be too concerned with 4 year graduation rates (vs. 6 year), I would guess that elite private colleges do make it a priority (it’s a competitive edge). When you’re paying $34,000 a year in tuition, graduation in 4 years becomes much more important than when you’re only paying $6,000 a year at UF.</p>