<p>Dietz199- where do you get the “larger and larger portion of students” part? I think that the percentage has probably been pretty stable over the years, may even less so now because of the financial meltdown. The networking connections? They are still very strong, PTL!</p>
<p>I agree with baystateresident - the number has been pretty stable over the years. It’s not economically feasible to increase the number of FA students and balance the books. If anything @Dietz, a “larger and larger” portion of the full pays are going to be pulled from pools of more ultra wealthy and well connected families given how many formerly “comfortable” families have been hit by the economy. I’ve not personally seen a dearth of families with limos and private planes, nor debutante balls in the past few years. 
On the contrary - those children may have an edge in admissions as the pool of students looking for financial assistance continues to grow. </p>
<p>I have seen, in the last decade, more effort to recruit middle class families who only need partial aid rather than the stereotypical “Full Aid” families people often think of when discussing the pros and cons. Exeter is one example of a school that realized it had full pays and full scholarship kids and not enough families in the “middle”. As a result, they created a scholarship endowment to address that issue. Scholarships funded by alumni and donors and which became fully funded more than a year a head of schedule.</p>
<p>I am a parent who grew up middle-middle class and is the product of a public school education. And now as a full-pay prep school parent who has the ENTIRE world to choose from (we are living abroad), I will not put my kid in a school w only rich kids.</p>
<p>If anything @Dietz, a “larger and larger” portion of the full pays are going to be pulled from pools of more ultra wealthy and well connected families given how many formerly “comfortable” families have been hit by the economy — THAT is the real tragedy of the current state of the make up of kids going to private schools. I for one will be curious to see what happens in the next ten years or so. The current crop of limos and private plane parents arent coming from the “usual” type of BS or private school families so it will be interesting to see how they will continue to donate once their kid is out of school. I assume that that is the reason for the Times article, as well.</p>
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<p>The likely result would be to return to the days when higher educational attainment was was more of a confirmation of inherited socioeconomic class and status, rather than an indicator of some type of intellectual merit and achievement. (Both were then and are now part of the equation, but the former was a larger factor decades ago than now.)</p>
<p>Such a situation would likely result in ■■■■■■■■ economic growth, or even economic contraction, as significant amounts of intellectual talent would be wasted due to being born into the “wrong” (i.e. non-wealthy) families who cannot afford even the cost of a state university today. In other words, this would reverse the economic gains starting in the 1950s when the GI Bill and the expansion of inexpensive state universities (which were much less expensive than they are now, after adjusting for inflation) made it possible for many more who had the intellectual ability and motivation to attend college and thus upgrade their economic productivity over their working lives.</p>
<p>[The</a> State of Boarding Schools 2012](<a href=“http://www.iecaonline.com/blog/2011/12/05/the-state-of-boarding-schools-2012/]The”>http://www.iecaonline.com/blog/2011/12/05/the-state-of-boarding-schools-2012/)
December 5, 2011
by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>The companion issue that came up over and over is “what has happened to the domestic market?” In nearly every session, discussion ultimately came to this: the disappearance of the “middle class” from boarding schools, creating a ‘bar bell’ curve of the student body with a sizable number of scholarship recipients at one end, and well-off full-paying students at the other (this later group is increasingly international in make up). Over and over came the refrain: “Where are the great middle class families that used to send their children to our schools?”</p>
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<p>I’m not categorically opposed to need-based financial aid, but every student ought to pay a good bit, say $15K, and some of the aid should be merit-based.</p>
<p>According to
<a href=“http://www.portersargent.com/FinancialAidTrends.pdf[/url]”>http://www.portersargent.com/FinancialAidTrends.pdf</a>
A historical Examination of
Financial Aid Trends in
american boarding Schools:
1935-2010</p>
<p>boarding school tuition in 1980 was usually in the $5000-$6000 range. By 2010 the typical list price was about $40,000 . The Consumer Price Index <a href=“ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt[/url]”>ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt</a> was 77.8 in Jan 1980 and 216.7 in Jan 2010. So BS list prices rose more than 7 times while other prices rose less than 3 times over this period. The problem is not that rich people paying the list price are being undercharged.</p>
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<p>But then this comes down to whether you want peer students who are academically elite versus those from socioeconomically elite families. I.e. those who are more likely to succeed and become influential on their own merits, versus those who are more likely to do so by inheritance.</p>
<p>Of course, different (expensive) private schools have different emphases in this respect.</p>
<p>Beliavsky, what makes an upper middle or upper class child more deserving of an elite education than a lower class student? You say low income students shouldn’t feel “entitled” to an elite education. The higher income student didn’t do anything other than be born in the right household, so why should s/he?</p>
<p>holocene ^^umm, precisely, the higher income students parents pay the sticker price, thus automatically get put in a different admission pool of students. I wouldn’t use the word, deserving, since I think its the wrong word for US schools, but historically that is who the schools were set up for, and currently that is still the larger population of private schools.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus - you bring up a good point about academically elite vs the socioeconomically elite. In my opinion, if people wanted only the academically elite, more schools like Thomas Jefferson in VA would open up, or NY parents would only send their kids to Stuy, Bronx Science and Bklyn Prep. I would even say (and actually do) that many of the BS that people on this forum call “the hidden gems” or some other name are academically not up to par with many good public high schools. If you think Im wrong go to a good ps teacher background and one of those gems teacher background and compare.</p>
<p>And yet, the American public as a whole don’t agree with you, mhmm: [In</a> U.S., Private Schools Get Top Marks for Educating Children](<a href=“http://www.gallup.com/poll/156974/private-schools-top-marks-educating-children.aspx]In”>In U.S., Private Schools Get Top Marks for Educating Children)
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<p>The NYT op-ed piece focused on the elite schools. The basic question would be, “should billionaires pay more?” In trying to answer that question, I think of the Concorde. (Any kids reading the Parents’ Forum: look it up. 
) </p>
<p>Now, the Concorde was arguably much better than the competition: faster. It was also much more expensive. It catered to a very small percentage of travelers. At the end, the airlines were apparently filling seats with discounts. </p>
<p>You can’t buy a ticket on the Concorde today. The people who used to fly Concorde are today flying first class, or their own jets. So, people are paying much more than they need to to cross the Atlantic. The private jet owners may even be paying much more than the Concorde tickets would have cost. The Concorde wasn’t “worth it” to its clientele. </p>
<p>The very, very few parents who could contemplate paying $100,000 for 1, 2, 3, 4 children without flinching have other options. At a certain price point, it would cost less to hire tutors (return to the old days!) I hear the schools in Palo Alto, Greenwich, Weston, etc. are not bad.</p>
<p>@Periwinkle, I appreciate the point you are making, but perhaps the Concorde is not the best analogy. Commercial Concorde service was discontinued, not because of flawed economic model, but because of flawed mechanical design. </p>
<p>Concorde super-sonic service was arguable “worth it” to the rich clientele for whom time-is-money. Now there exists no equivalent commercial product.</p>
<p>@mhmm,</p>
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<p>I daresay many of the BS parents on the the prep school board would gladly send their kids to one of these public magnet schools. But unfortunately for them, they don’t live in the schools’ catchment area.</p>
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<p>Ummm duh. But Beliavsky is objecting to low income students receiving privately funded financial aid. Historically ALL schools were set up for the ruling elite, especially the ivies. I don’t think we should return to those days - it essentially eliminates social mobility except in a few rare circumstances. I will never understand the “historically this” argument. So what if it happened in the past? Lots of imperfect things happened in the past (and now as well obviously)! Should we stop trying to improve our society and instead say “well, this is the way it is?” Low income students face a tougher applicant pool due to their need. If they get in, which is already more difficult because not only is their applicant pool tougher, they also most likely don’t come from a family that can provide them with the academic privileges that the upper income students receive, I don’t see why we should begrudge them for their achievement. It’s a PRIVATE donation. Many of the donors even have strings attached to their donation regarding how it can be spent.</p>
<p>^^ please quote where Beliavsky is objecting to low income students receiving privately funded financial aid.<br>
"Historically ALL schools were set up for the ruling elite, especially the ivies. " – you are aware that this is the Boarding School forum and the original article we are discussing is about private day and boarding schools, and not colleges, right? I only mention this b/c you refer to the ivies, of which boarding schools have none.
“hey also most likely don’t come from a family that can provide them with the academic privileges that the upper income students receive” – I would argue that is not the case for the majority of boarding school students. I would say that if you look at the make up of those kids on scholarship, you will see their families as very concerned with education, providing them the same educational opportunities as the upper income families. They may not provide them with fabulous vacations, but learning they do provide. Its the nature of the beast, since the families that seek out boarding schools are by definition interested in their kids education.</p>