<p>The “wealthy” parents at the elite private colleges are also de facto financial aid recipients. They may be on the hook for the full tuition, but they are not on the hook for the full operating cost for their child. </p>
<p>Last year Harvard’s operating budget was $3.5 billion, of which a $1.2 billion revenue shortfall was made up from earnings on endowment. $0.17 billion was used for FA, which means the remaining $1+ billion was applied as a subsidy for everyone-- including for the wealthy, so called “full-pay” kids.</p>
<p>‘The “wealthy” parents at the elite private colleges are also de facto financial aid recipients. They may be on the hook for the full tuition, but they are not on the hook for the full operating cost for their child.’</p>
<p>I have seen such statistics and do not trust them. I went to Harvard. Professors typically taught one class per semester, spending three hours a week in the classroom. I doubt that more than 25% of their time was spent on teaching, including preparation. They were working hard – at research. Does the “operating cost” charge the full amount of professors’ salaries and other costs of a research university as an expense of teaching undergraduates? Including their salaries during the summer and on sabbaticals, when they are not teaching anyone? If so, the number is rubbish.</p>
<p>@Beliavsky,
If you went to Harvard as a matriculated student rather than as a tourist, then you would know that the operating cost of any major institution includes much more than a simplistic sum of salaries. </p>
<p>As for your not believing their numbers, all non-profits have to file annual returns with the IRS. I hope the IRS has more confidence in their “rubbish” numbers than you do.</p>
<p>I do think the OP saw this thread on the general discussion forum and thought it was about college. I see from their other posts that he or she is a public high school student who wants to apply to some very selective schools.</p>
<p>The greatest predictor of poverty is being/or being raised in a single parent household. Just simple fact. So, your statement is true. Very un PC, and it will get you hammered here and probably in many other types of social settings…but that doesn’t make it any less true.</p>
<p>This thread was supposed to be about whether tuition should be means-based at private schools, and not about whether children who are raised in a single parent household will be poor.</p>
<p>Statistically, the children will grow up poor. But I have a hard time understanding why someone would begrudge a private donor from helping the poor kids who want to help themselves, to break the cycle of poverty.</p>
<p>GMTplus7- you’re right! I was thinking of the one father down the page. I remember looking because I wanted to see who actually thinks along those lines…</p>
<p>The inflation of BS tuition rates is extreme and persistent, say 3-4% for much of the last decade, as an educated guess. The editorial of Mr. Asen put the burden on how to make up the gap between true cost and tuition. Another concern is what is causing the cost increases and how to tame them, in the hope that tuition is not $55,000 before current students graduate. Any thoughts about this side of the equation? Does a top 60 school need to constantly spend more to improve? What is going on?</p>
<p>Wow, the lack of compassion for the less fortunate exhibited by some of these posters is unbelievable. Thankfully, people with this mentality do not govern the boards of the private boarding schools we talk about here. They are entitled to their opinions, but lets be thankful that such myopic views are inconsistent with the FA policies and generous spirits of the schools represented here. Im with @Charger78lets get back to the real discussion.</p>
<p>I do agree that no one is entitled to an elite education. </p>
<p>That’s true for everyone.</p>
<p>If the price is too high, there are other options. If you find the cost Harvard would charge you too high, your kid may be a strong enough student to win a merit scholarship to another university. In which case, it would be sensible to take the merit scholarship. (Does anyone know how many students take this route?)</p>
<p>After a few Google searches, I found claims that Ivy League colleges charge about 1/2 the full cost of educating a student.</p>
<p>That’s the core of Mr. Asen’s argument, I suppose. The schools should officially charge the full cost, and adjust the amount paid to reflect each family’s means. For most families, it wouldn’t change the amount paid, but the 0.001% at the top would pay $100,000, rather than $49,810. </p>
<p>I don’t object to need-based financial aid. I think it’s fairer than unendowed merit scholarships. (Cue the uproar.) The other enrolled students are covering the cost of the unendowed merit scholarships. Apparently, most colleges which award merit scholarships are effectively “buying” better class SAT score averages, etc. So, the salesman’s daughter pays higher tuition to subsidize the discount (i.e., merit scholarship) offered to the dentist’s son.</p>
<p>'The report’s authors used data from the U.S. Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or Ipeds, to conclude that more than half of students attend institutions that take in more per student in tuition payments than what it actually costs them to deliver an education.</p>
<p>The chief reason universities inflate the figures on what they spend to educate students, says the report, is that institutions include all of their spending—whether it is directly related to instruction or not—when calculating what it costs them to provide an education. </p>
<p>The original report is</p>
<p>[Who</a> Subsidizes Whom?:](<a href=“CollegeLifeHelper.com”>CollegeLifeHelper.com)
An Analysis of Educational Costs and Revenues
By Andrew Gillen, Matthew Denhart and Jonathan Robe
April 2011</p>
<p>No surprise there. At the elite schools, it would be simplistic to think otherwise. </p>
<p>True, an undergrad student at Dartmouth generally does not avail him/herself of all the research and ancillary activities that the university conducts and is on the hook for funding. However that student benefits from having access to those vast resources and from being associated with an institution which derives prestige from its research and ancillary activities. By your narrow thinking, a chem-E major could also argue that the school was spending large amounts of money on things unrelated to educating him/herself-- things like dance and anthropology classes.</p>
<p>If your expectation is that every dollar a school spends should be on something directly related to educating you, then the no-frills community college model would be more suited to you.</p>
<p>I don’t get the angst and ire. Institutions are free to charge what the believe is the “market value” of their product and you as the consumer are free to decline.</p>
<p>This isn’t about an issue of fairness, or that you’ll be on the hook for more tuition in college. It is that you are making a choice to send children to private school rather than public, and to a highly competitive college/university rather than the local community college where you’ll get in-state tuition breaks. It is that you can’t wrap your mind around the fact that some people are wealthy due to hard work, others due to luck or inheritance. Either way - they control the vast majority of the world’s wealth and assets. Somehow I don’t think they’re getting shafted in this bargain. After tuition, I suspect there is significantly more disposable income left for spending, than most middle and lower class families paying a reduced amount. </p>
<p>The bottom line is: no matter what choices you make, you’re still free to take what is offered or walk away. With most schools turning down the vast majority of applicants - I suspect the absence of a few wealthy kids whose parents object to the cost will have little impact on the school’s success or those of the students they do admit.</p>
<p>The heavy reliance on cost shifting in education to those that are deemed ‘able to pay’…(and a deemed on this site…morally obligate to to pay) is is rather new given the age of the institutions now practicing need only aid. It is not that far of a stretch to see the next step of equalization to include a stepped up tuition schedule based on family resources…It will be interesting to see where the tipping point occurs.</p>
<p>Part of the allure of elite - and expensive - schools has been that the Parental Units know Skippy and Buffy will be making the appropriate contacts and connections because the student body brings with them these relationships. It’s not that far fetched to see a point where the PU’s might question the value of an elite institution if a larger and larger portion of students do not bring with them these networking connections.</p>