“It’s not as of Mich is paying for low income OOS students to attend. Sometimes you’re white student from a wealthy suburb is just plain rejected, and it didn’t have to do with their wealth or skin color.”
Michigan is not very diverse at all. The last I saw it was about 7% AA, and 7% Latino. Still, if a white kid doesn’t get in, those kids must be the reason. Sheesh. Those comments come from ignorance, and the need to blame someone else instead of taking responsibility. Not so long ago some would have also blamed women for taking up seats that should have gone to men. I think we are mostly past that one now.
Thanks for that @ucbalumnus . I’d still like to see that debt. Because even though many more students are in public institutions, they are paying less, so perhaps borrow less.
If it is true that public school debt is the largest overall, that’s saying something when we talk about overall debt in the country.
The data are somewhat dated, but according to Department of Education’s National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NSPAS), in 2012:
71% of students graduating from 4-year colleges had student debt averaging $29,400
That breaks down as follows:
66% of students graduating from public 4-year institutions had student debt averaging $25,550
75% of students graduating from private non-profit institutions had student debt averaging $32,300
88% of students graduating from private for-profit institutions had student debt averaging $39,950
That’s a snapshot for a single year, but cumulative totals are broadly similar. The NSPAS survey is done once every four years, so 2016 data should be out probably sometime in 2017 or 2018.
I believe the default rate is also much higher for graduates of for-profit institutions. If you’re worried about how much the government is “on the hook” for, you should be concerned not only about the total amount of debt out there, but also default rates. Most student debt is repaid. It’s the students at for-profit institutions that are likeliest to borrow, carry the highest average debt, and are most likely to default.
The high rate of borrowing and average debt load at private non-profit colleges and universities may seem surprising to some because we’re accustomed to hearing about the generous FA policies of a handful of elite private schools, but the vast majority of private colleges and universities do not have large endowments, do not meet full need, and charge high tuition. Not only do many or most students at these schools get “gapped,” but to the extent students do receive need-based aid, loans are almost invariably part of the mix. Of course, the situation is much the same at most public universities, but because tuition is lower, a smaller percentage of students need to borrow, and those who do borrow tend to borrow less on average. As tuition rises at public universities, however, the gap appears to be narrowing. According to NSPAS, average debt at public institutions increased by 25% between 2008 and 2012, while the increase at private non-profit institutions was only 15% over that same period.
Yes, in a previous age, states may have subsidized nonresident tuition in hopes of attracting strong students to come, study, and stay to contribute to the state economy.
Now that is politically difficult in many states due to budget problems, resident resentment of any nonresident students taking up “their” space in state universities, and general short term thinking.
Many public universities still do subsidize OOS students with generous merit scholarships. The University of Alabama, for one, doesn’t come close to meeting need for in-state students but lavishes very generous National Merit awards regardless of state residency, and many other public universities have similar if less conspicuous merit scholarship policies. Some, like Michigan State’s honors college, reduce tuition for top OOS students to the in-state rate, and give additional merit awards on top of that. Taking another tack, the University of Virginia meets full need for all including OOS students, and the University of Michigan is committed to a goal of meeting full need for all its students supported by a $4 billion capital campaign now underway that, if successful, should allow it to meet that goal.
Such policies may be “politically difficult” in California but they’re quite common elsewhere.
Yes, but only for a select few, rather than all of them via low non-resident list price like was done in the past.
However, both of those schools have very low enrollments of low-to-middle income students (the ones with Pell grants, 12% at Virginia and 13% at Michigan), so that may not seem like a big a thing as it looks.
@bclintonk, UVa (actually, an alumni foundation there) also offers some very generous scholarships.
Anyway, UMinny OOS costs are still reasonable. Not sure that the state is subsidizing OOS costs there, though, as the school does not spend much on undergrads there per capita.
Many states still offer rather low OOS tuition rates even before any scholarships or grants - South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico for the reason that they need bodies. It benefits the instate students to have the OOS students there so they can offer more classes, have better facilities. Utah and Missouri make it easy to become a resident and benefit from the lower rates.
I think it benefits flagships to have the diversity OOS students bring. Who wants to only go to school with students just like themselves, who have studied from the same text books, who have taken the same state government course in 4th grade and 8th grade, who have had the same TV news and political bodies for their lives? Bring in some other views, other experiences. What percentage of OOS makes the perfect mix while still being fair to the state residents to get an education in their state, I don’t know.
Not sure about Virginia, but Michigan’s Pell grant figure is skewed by the fact that the university hasn’t met full need for OOS students who comprise roughly 40% of the student body, with the result that an overwhelming majority of OOS students are full-pay. Low- and moderate-income OOS admits usually decide they need to go somewhere more affordable. I believe it’s partly to redress this inequity that the university os now committed to a goal of meeting full need for all OOS students. That should move the needle on socioeconomic diversity.
The University of Minnesota made a conscious decision about a decade ago to set OOS tuition at a few thousand dollars above the in-state rate, hoping to attract highly qualified OOS students and thereby strengthen the student body while also strengthening tuition revenue. They met one goal but not the other. Middle 50% ACT scores are up from 22-25 in the fall of 2000 with only 11.9% scoring 30+, to a middle 50% of 26-31 in the fall of 2015 with 36.2% scoring 30+. That’s a pretty dramatic improvement. But OOS enrollment has remained more or less constant, at 25% in 2000 and 26% in 2015. They’re getting more highly qualified OOS students, but not more sheer numbers of OOS students, and on top of that, a large fraction of the OOS students are from Wisconsin with smaller but non-trivial numbers from North and South Dakota and Manitoba, all jurisdictions that enjoy tuition reciprocity. All this has led the current administration to conclude they’re probably leaving too much money on the table by offering bargain-basement OOS tuition. They’re now committed to gradually raising OOS tuition to a point just shy of the median for Big Ten schools in order to capture more OOS tuition dollars. But they’re nervous about scaring off OOS applicants and admits, so they’ll raise tuition in increments over a period of years.