This thread is so eye opening. I didn’t know that need-based may not cover everything…
Rerun- what major does Rutgers not offer and are you slicing the bologna too thin? Lots of kids post on CC that they have to attend “dream school” for a major in neuroscience. Guess what- there is not a single flagship state U where you can’t major in neuroscience. It may not be called neuroscience- you may need to major in cognitive psychology or biochemistry in order to take the classes you are interested in, but you will be every bit as qualified to apply to grad schools (which is where actual neuroscience is going to happen) as someone with neuro stamped on their diploma.
Ditto for loads of other majors.
Kiplingers only lists 300 “best value” schools, so this is by no means complete. The link given is for the top 100 best value schools, which leaves out many more non-merit schools e.g the entire Ivy League (oddly, Columbia isn’t listed at all on either list).
To my mind, the important thing is figuring out which schools fit within a family’s budget. A student who wouldn’t receive any need-based aid at Reed or Brown might get aid at Stanford or Harvard.
If a full-pay family can’t afford to pay full freight, or doesn’t want to pay that much, then yes, it would be foolish to waste effort applying to schools where you know from the get-go that the school will be too expensive.
It also comes from relatively small donations–like mine–to my alma mater that I want to be spent on need-based financial aid. So what business is it of anybody’s if I want to use my money to help poor kids go to college? When you go to the grocery store, do you gripe that just down the street a church has a food pantry that gives away food to poor people for free?
Merit aid (including athletic scholarships) is mostly a form of marketing. A lot of that aid is also paid for by people who value it, like athletic boosters.
I understand what you’re saying. It’s a difficult situation and I’m not sure what the answer is. I made sure my daughter applied to some schools that have merit based awards.
Depends on the school, actually—there’s wide variation in the way cash flows around any given college.
@Regulus, if all of the schools were well filled with rich kids and/or with poor kids due to their “progressive” aid packages, and as balanced as you suggest; student debt wouldn’t be topping 1.3 Trillion dollars in this country.
The problem is folks in the middle cannot afford it, the EFC does not work, and they end up over-borrowing. COST is the problem and must be addressed to fix the system.
@blossom
;
that’s all I want.
perhaps I am spreading the bolanga too thin.
I would be surprised if you couldn’t find what you needed at Rutgers, even if it took a little effort to craft the right academic program.
My kid couldn’t find her major (academic, not pre-professional) at the flagship, nor even cobble it together through other depts. Nor at a few other state school we explored. Just saying. But I don’t think any family with need should get to the app deadlines without understanding finaid to the fullest extent they can.
Rerun, I hope you ran NPCs.
Re: affordability and student debt
A lot of the debt being incurred is not because middle income familes cannot afford the cost. It is because families and students cannot afford the cost of their chosen college and are not willing for student to go to a community college or directional.
Even at the community college level, I have seen students accumulate debt out of all proportion to the expected wage in their future career. Improved FA counseling is really needed so students know how they can get their college degree with lower debt.
What is the source for saying families at the $60k income level are gapped any more than others?
I helped my D compile her college list. I went over the CDS’s with a fine toothed comb, looking at FA awards by income level, average loan by year in college, average “free” money, etc. She ended up with mostly schools that rated well, a few outliers that we’ll just have to see what they offer.
The NPC’s don’t apply to our unique situation so I never ran them.
Not just a cc or directional, but a more affordable choice.
I totally agree that the cost for the vast majority of universities is out of control. I went to school OOS is early 80’s and paid $2000/yr for room and board and $1200/yr for tuition. Instate tuition was $120/yr. I went to work for $16000/yr. ROI - less than 1 year. Now, room and board has increased to $10000 to $12000 - a 5Xto 6X increase. Instate tuition at public is now $12000, a 100X increase and that is for instate public, the best deal around. ROI is years depending on your degree. Wages maybe have increased 3 to 4X. What happened to tuition! What happened to the cost of college!
The prevailing thought is that states have decreased their contribution to higher ed therefore forcing them to raise tuition and as a percentage of total - that is true. But as an absolute number, at least in Texas, that is not true. In some states, it is - I believe Pennsylvania is one - and they have the highest instate tuition in the nation. Why have costs at universities skyrocketed.
Now, students cannot work their way thru college. They have to depend on their parents, loans, and not enough FA. In our area, CC is $600 a class or $3000 a semester, not a cheap solution. Students have lost control of their own destiny. They know education is a key to a better life but they cannot make it by themselves and many parents, stepparents, single parents can’t or won’t help because by doing so imperils their own financial situation.
I don’t know what the answer is. I feel this is like The Giving Tree. You keep giving and giving until there is nothing left.
Thank you for letting me rant.
I was in your shoes once. I paid off all those loans. Now I need to pay for my 2 full pay kids who will overlap 2 years. I don’t begrudge you FA at all. But do you realize that it does cost full pay parents? It’s not free. I will likely have to work an additional 4-5 years before I can retire to pay for it. So there IS an impact similar to your “I won’t pay off the loans until I’m my fathers age”…it’s that I won’t be able to retire until I’m my father’s age! Either that or I stick my kid with loans. Having been there…not doing that! Remember this lesson when you have kids:)
I disagree that the impact is similar. @Rerungirl will have loans until she’s her father’s age. It sounds like your children won’t have any. The options Rerun Girl will have (choice of jobs, where she can afford to live, when she can afford to buy a home, etc.) will be affected because she carries debt. Students who can graduate without debt, especially when they have parents who can afford to underwrite living expenses, can make career moves (taking the less well paying job that offers a better chance of advancement or holding out for a good job) that low income students who have student loans can’t. I don’t see much of a similarity in those situations at all.
A great deal of student debt is from a relative handful of schools that not only leave students with debt, but also have a large percentage of students who end up in default on their loans. Just to add insult to injury, many of these students don’t finish their degree; those who do often can’t find jobs that justify the time and money they spent. For-profit schools, schools with horrible student loan repayment records–these are generally not the $60k a year schools that offer strong need-based aid.
As a taxpayer, I want to see a reduction in the costs of public school via increased state subsidies. Decades ago, the state of California invested a lot of money in paying for me and my siblings (and my spouse) to attend UCs and CSUs for undergrad and grad/professional school. That was a wise investment; California has done very well by us. I want to do the same for this current generation, and for many more to come.
@austinmshauri
The similarity is that the consequence to ME, the one paying is real when I cannot retire. Did you read my post? I paid those loans when I was a kid, over $100k. So you are wasting breath preaching to me. It delayed home buying, marriage, children. It dictated most of my career choices. The point is to learn from it and make sure your kids don’t have to do it. You make sacrifices to get to where you need to be, not necessarily where you want to be.
The point also was that taking $200k plus from me, the parent, limits my retirement choices…I have to work longer, scale down. Nothing is free. Nothing is without consequence to someone. Someone has to pay. In my case, it will be me, not my kid. I made sure of that. Don’t dismiss other people’s struggles just bc they made it.
@HRSMom, Many of us paid our way through college and are now making sure our children will graduate with no debt. I wouldn’t compare our situation to a low income student who has limited options.
It’s easy to say that people should learn from experiences, but it’s a little more difficult in the real world to “make sure” of anything. My father had a well paying job until he developed a condition that robbed him of his eyesight. Divorce, longterm illnesses, even unexpected deaths have changed the plans of several friends midstream, so to speak. Life happens and people do the best they can.
I’m glad you feel like you “made it.” I suspect we have very different ideas about what that means.
After both my parents lost their jobs a year apart, it limited my choices too. But, Having been very low income, I see that someone always has to pay. Either way. It is wrong to simply assume otherwise. People just seem to like to dump on full pay families as tho it will only impact their choices in yachts. It has real impacts to them as well. That’s all I’m saying.
I can live without the veiled insult regarding “making it”. Why does everyone need to feel morally superior on CC?