NYT: Wake Up, Sheeple! College Still Cheap!

<p>It seems to me that there is a “donut hole” of families that make too much to get significant financial aid, but for whom full pay at the most expensive privates calls for unreasonable sacrifices. At a couple of the very most generous colleges–and Amherst may be one of them–that donut hole is small, or possibly non-existent. At private schools that don’t meet full need (or that don’t define need as expansively as Harvard does), it can be pretty big. I have to wonder if some colleges are more and more composed of full pays and no pays. Indeed, the article noted that the average price paid at Amherst has stayed the same as the fully pay price has gone up substantially, so it may be the trend there. I don’t think that’s an ideal situation for any college.</p>

<p>It would be interesting to compare the distribution of family incomes from the most generous colleges that give aid up to relatively high levels to the distribution of family incomes at similarly situated elite schools that don’t give aid so far up the spectrum – like a lot of the other top 20 or 30 schools. Actually it would also be interesting to compare the distribution of family incomes at the applicant-pool level, because I wonder if Harvard et al’s very generous policies have skewed the applicant-pools beyond what they would have been under more customary FA.</p>

<p>I believe full-pay+no-pay add up to at least the majority (and at some, the vast majority) of the student body at all elite privates now.</p>

<p>State flagships have now become the refuge of the upper-middle/middle class. The higher education market is changing rapidly. With government fin aid not keeping up with tuition inflation, these days, either the average or median (I forget which) family income of students at UMinny-TC is higher than that at Macalester, across town.</p>

<p>I think the idea of a ‘doughnut hole’ probably doesn’t hold at most of the privates that don’t have large endowments and don’t have lots of name recognition–in other words, those universities that are tuition dependent. These colleges typically gap in terms of financial aid, and they steer most of their institutional dollars towards merit and not need based aid. </p>

<p>For example, the University of Puget Sound gives the average net pay by family income as follows:
0-30K net price 22973
30-48 28211
48-75 30241
75-110 33731
over 110 37613</p>

<p>It looks expensive for everyone. I think the financial aid landscape is very misunderstood by most people, with the mistaken impression that those of lower incomes can count on large amounts of need based aid at most institutions.</p>

<p>Even at some publics, very little institutional money goes towards need based aid. Thus, there’s not a huge difference between the net price at the lowest income and that of the highest, if you consider the cost in terms of percentage.My favorite example is the University of Alabama.</p>

<p>The net price for those making 0-30K is 17206. That for the middle 48-75 is 21363. And for the highest over 110K is 23748. </p>

<p>My impression is that this is more typical than the ‘doughnut hole’ situation, at least from the schools I’ve looked at.
Most universities just can’t dole out need based aid to help out those with lower incomes–they use their institutional money to attract those with higher test scores (good for rankings) or higher incomes, by discounting, to get more tuition dollars.</p>

<p>I got these numbers from IPEDS.</p>

<p>No UNDERGRAD school is worth impoverishing yourself to afford.</p>

<p>So, maybe at private (or even public) schools that aren’t at the very top of selectivity, they can close up the donut hole with merit aid–perhaps capturing kids would maybe couldn’t get into Harvard (or another school with super-generous financial aid), but could get into super-selective schools with less generous aid. What’s the situation at Cornell?</p>

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<p>Her life isn’t going to be changed. She’s wants and is going to be a nurse. The smartest move she could make is to become a nurse where she wants to live once she has the degree and goes job hunting.</p>

<p>Cornell looks more as you would expect from a school with generous need based aid. At the lowest bracket, net price is 9139. At the highest, it’s 41891. But it’s hard to know if someone is paying that price at 150k, since the highest is just 110K or over, and it’s not broken down any further.</p>

<p>But I wouldn’t classify Cornell as a tuition dependent private with little name recognition.</p>

<p>There are some smaller LACs, with decent endowments close to a half a billion, that tend to put more money towards need based aid. Denison is one example, which has a net price spread similar to Cornell. The lowest income bracket is around 9 and the highest at around 32. </p>

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<p>In my defense, I should like to point out that I have the exact same thread running with a much more polite subject heading on another forum and, as of this moment, exactly two posters have responded. :)</p>

<p>Have to remark that asking about Cornell was strange. Cornell has the same all-fin-aid, no-merit-aid policy as the other Ivies.</p>

<p>And Rhodes is more like 'Bama with aid. Low end is about the same as 'Bama’s; then it becomes a bit higher as you move up.</p>

<p>My son is at an all fin aid, no merit aid policy college (Bates) and we were very pleasantly surprised at the amount of FA (grants, not loans) he was given and our income is around $125K/yr. He has gotten between $38K and $40K/yr each yr. They did throw in the Stafford loan but we haven’t needed it. We will end up paying $81K in total for his 4 years there, which includes his student contribution, which we also pay. Bates doesn’t have a very large endowment compared to their peer colleges but they are pretty generous, imo. </p>

<p>I have no idea what their cut off is for aid, but we were given about $15K more than our EFC suggested. </p>

<p>I think of “sheeple” as a joke and not an insult. Didn’t it come from Stephen Colbert? That’s the only context in which I have heard it. If he was borrowing an insulting term from someone else to mock it, it makes its use more ambiguous. Did it originate with the ultra-right-wing?</p>

<p>^^ I know it was in use in the 1980s. Wasn’t it favored by conspiracy theorists and such? Wikipedia mentioned MIlton William Cooper, who was an HIV conspiracy-nut and a UFO/Illuminati theorist. </p>

<p>The article has a graph showing how the average inflation adjusted net price at Amherst has remained relatively unchanged over the past couple decades, even though the inflation adjusted tuition has increased substantially. In another thread, I did this same calculation for some other highly selective colleges with excellent financial aid and came to the same conclusion – the average inflation adjusted net price was essentially unchanged at the colleges I compared, even though tuition had dramatic increases. </p>

<p>The inflation adjusted cost has gone up for higher income families, but the cost has decreased for most lower and middle income families due to improved financial aid. Different people will have different opinions about whether this is good or bad, in much the same way as opinions differ about whether it is good to have a far higher tax rate for high income families than for lower and middle income families. Of course there are many colleges with different policies than described in the article. You can only have wealthy families carry the bulk of the financial burden if you have a large number of wealthy families… it’s possible at most elite colleges, but becomes less practical at colleges where wealthy families make up a small portion of the incoming class.</p>

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IPEDS only includes cost for students that apply for title IV financial aid – both loans and grants. This government loan/aid group is not representative of the cost for most students. It would be more accurate to use NPCs instead.</p>

<p>@Data10‌

So, what you’re saying, is that at the University of Puget Sound a family making over $110,000 a year would be considered “rich”.</p>

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I’m not sure why you’d infer that from my post. The article focuses on Amherst, so I’ll use Amherst as an example. If I use Amherst’s net price calculator for a family with an income of $200k/yr and 1 kid in college, it returns a large financial aid grant of ~$25,000/yr. At an income of $250k/yr, the financial aid still looks decent, with a grant size of ~$10,000/yr. It isn’t until getting into incomes well over $250k/yr (or various unique financial situations) that little FA is available. Nevertheless, roughly half of Amherst students do not receive financial aid. This suggests Amherst has a large portion of kids from $250k+/yr families, so they can easily offer generous financial aid to lower and middle income students by letting the many $250k+/yr families pick up the financial burden… raising tuition for only the high income group. At the other end of the spectrum, there are colleges like Lane College where 98% of the student body receives Pell grants. It’s a safe bet that Lane College doesn’t get many $250k+/yr families, so if they offered the same generous FA as Amherst, then nearly everyone would have a net parental cost of $0, and they probably wouldn’t have enough tuition coming in to operate the college. The wealthier the student body, the more easily a college can offer generous financial aid to typical middle income families.</p>

<p>In 2012-13, the Amherst budget listed total current expenses of almost exactly $150M (<a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/545457”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/545457&lt;/a&gt;). With about 1,800 students, the average cost per student is around $83,300. In that sense, even full-payers are not paying the freight. Of course, some of those expenditures are not going directly to the educational mission (e.g., fund raising, alumni relations).</p>

<p>@Data10‌

So, I’d be justified in inferring that at Amherst a family making over $250,000 a year would be considered “rich”. You just said so.</p>

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<p>I understand. And this happens at state schools, too. The UCs significantly raised their tuition a few years ago so that the upper-middle class could help provide tuition money (UC-aid) to the middle and lower income students. It has gotten where someone earning $100k or so, can’t pay the $32k per year to attend a sleep-away UC, but a family earning under $80k can…because of the aid. </p>

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<p>If they were going to go to medical school, then blowing 250k on undergrad isnt a great idea either.</p>

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<p>I think that there are some colleges that are largely composed of full/near-full pays and no/little pays. The near-full pays can close the gap with a student loan, maybe some summer earnings, and some frugality. </p>

<p>Likely, these schools are lacking a large number of students whose “family contributions” clock in at around $35-40k (without loans). These would be the families earning about $125k per year. While that income sounds strong, in many areas of the country, that income may just be covering mortgage, other living expenses, basic cars and clothing, and typical “kid costs”…with little/nothing to save towards college.</p>

<p>I think UCBerkeley may have found itself in a situation of mostly full pays and huge-need students. That may be why it has begun offering a more generous aid pkg to those who earn beyond the Blue and Gold $80k threshold. </p>

<p>I do wonder about how some of these lesser-known very small privates stay alive.<br>
I think a number of them depend heavily on commuters who are just covering tuition/fees.</p>