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<p>Spare us the sarcasm. No one has advocated an unlimited voucher for college, but a voucher of a fixed dollar amount is actually a plausible way to subsidize college.</p>
<p>“Personally I think the state should also pay housing costs for the very wealthy. Why should Donald Trump have to pay for his penthouse digs while the state covers housing costs for some homeless man in Queens?”</p>
<p>Actually,we do. It’s called the “mortgage interest deduction”, and the tax treatment of rental property. In reality, we’ve paid for Trump’s penthouse multi-times over - he has claimed bankruptcy three times, and the state has bailed him out of “poverty”.</p>
<p>I think that it was the bondholders that lost out.</p>
<p>The mortgage deduction is only allowed up to a mortgage of $1 million. That won’t buy a Trump penthouse condo of any size. The treatmebnt for apts certainly leads to construction of new apt units. That helps the housing supply and keeps down rents in most markets…</p>
<p>Since his house is protected by bankruptcy proceedings, it doesn’t matter, does it? But poor guy if he has to live in a house costing only a mil. At any rate, if his children go to my alma mater, we always subsidize the millionaire’s kids (about $140k over four years).</p>
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<p>Don’t those kids pay it back in alumni contributions?</p>
<p>That “we” would be the previous generations of millionaires that built the endowment. I do not think that includes you to any significant degree. Just sayin.</p>
<p>The cross-subsidies are too numerous to list. But here’s a partial one:</p>
<p>Out of state students subsidize in-staters.
Rich kids subsidize poor ones.
Taxpayers (even those without kids/students) subsidize in state students.
Dumb kids subsidize the scholarships of smart kids.
English majors subsidize engineering majors whose education costs more (labs, materials, etc.).
Non-athletes subsidize athletes.
Non-faculty families subsidize faculty/staff students (who often attend for free).
Endowment donors subsidize all students.
Federal research dollars subsidize the professors and students in the labs that receive the grants.</p>
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<p>Speak for yourself. </p>
<p>I’m paying back the scholarships for my son.</p>
<p>I doubt that I’m the only person doing this.</p>
<p>If they are going to redistribute to help low income students, I firmly believe they should have to maintain at the very least a 3.5 GPA or they will have to pay it back.</p>
<p>Right, even though they won’t have the money to pay for it since their GPAs suck and they are poor.</p>
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<p>Well, for one, it depends on how one defines “fair.”
One could argue that it is, indeed, “fair.”</p>
<p>Two, if one believes that what you describe is true (and I’m not certain I’m blindly willing to take that leap) then the question arises - how best to rectify that situation.</p>
<p>And, three, there is the common bromide that “life is not fair.”
Deal with the situation, do the best one can and move on.
As I’ve posted before, I grew up with little money … parents paid zero toward my college and grad school expenses … I worked full-time through college and took out loans … here I am.
“Limited means” should not be a crutch or an excuse.</p>
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<p>I’m generally with you in spirit, northwesty, but a lot of your claims require further qualification:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>At many public universities, both out-of-state and in-state students are subsidized by the university. OOS students subsidize in-staters only if OOS tuition exceeds the full cost of providing the education the OOS students receive. That may be true at some schools, but at many, perhaps most, even the OOS students are being subsidized, albeit to a lesser extent than in-staters.</p></li>
<li><p>Rich kids are more likely to subsidize poor ones at private than at public colleges and universities. That’s because public universities tend to subsidize the rich as well as the poor with steeply discounted tuition based on state residency.</p></li>
<li><p>Taxpayers do subsidize in-state students, but usually the taxpayer subsidy is less than the value of the tuition discount received by in-state students. The university makes up the rest out of other sources of university funds (payout on endowment, annual giving, intellectual property licensing fees, “indirect cost recovery” on externally funded research, etc.).</p></li>
<li><p>I wouldn’t want to say that “dumb kids” subsidize merit scholarships for high-achievers, but it is often true that merit aid has a regressive redistributive effect, subsidizing the well-off to the detriment of those with need, especially at schools that give generous merit aid but don’t meet 100% of need. </p></li>
<li><p>Some schools set different tuition levels by major to reflect differing costs.</p></li>
<li><p>Non-athletes don’t subsidize athletes at schools where the athletic program is fully self-supporting. Granted, there are relatively few of these, but it does matter.</p></li>
<li><p>In my experience it’s pretty rare for a public university to offer free tuition to the offspring of faculty. Some privates offer tuition discounts or provide a tuition benefit to faculty members who have kids in college, usually in the form of extra pay (which is taxable income to the recipient). But it’s hard to say that money is coming directly out of the pockets of non-faculty families; it’s just part of the negotiated compensation package, same as health care or dental coverage, pension benefits, or term life insurance.</p></li>
<li><p>Endowment donors indirectly subsidize all students (depending on how the university elects to spend its endowment payout). Annual givers more directly subsidize all students.</p></li>
<li><p>Federal (and other externally generated) research grants subsidize not only the professors and students in the labs that receive the grants; they subsidize the entire university community to the extent the university charges them what’s called “indirect cost recovery,” a kind of university-level tax on externally generated research grants that goes to fund the university’s general operating overhead. At big-time research universities this is an enormous source of revenue for the general fund budget.</p></li>
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<p>“Don’t those kids pay it back in alumni contributions?”</p>
<p>Maybe, maybe not. Similar for the low-income kids who go to state universities. As a percentage of their subsidy, it is possible that their contributions are greater.</p>
<p>BC – public schools are all over the map on whether they do/don’t give free tuition to faculty/staff kids. Cal, UCLA and UVA don’t do that. Ohio State, Michigan State, UConn, Maryland and Florida do.</p>
<p>And since those benefits are typically provided tax free, U.S. taxpayers are also subsidizing those faculty kids.</p>
<p>And any kid at a State U that gets a federal student loan is getting subsidized by federal tax payers.</p>
<p>Most athletes do get subsidized by non-athletes since few schools have self-supporting athletics departments and many schools charge a mandatory athletics fee to all students. In the schools where the AD is self-supporting, the football and mens hoops players subsidize the athletes in the non-revenue sports.</p>
<p>You could go on forever on who is or is not a maker/taker at a big college.</p>
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<p>It is appropriate for people who run universities to use their professional judgment to design educational programs with the optimal balance of quality and cost. Many factors contribute to quality yet also drive up costs. For example, it costs money to reduce class sizes, hire distinguished professors, continue offering low-demand majors, or build new facilities. It also costs money to make scholarships available to good students who could not otherwise afford to attend. Many colleges incur all these costs in the belief that they contribute to educational quality for the whole community.</p>
<p>Engineering students often pay extra fees.
northwesty, Can kids at private schools not get federal loans, Stafford? My kids went to public schools and did take out Staffords, but they were unsubsidized. Kids at publics can get either subsidized or unsubsidized Staffords. Also some can get Pell grants. Are you saying kids at privates are not eligible for any of that? Just curious.</p>
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<p>Even in the absence of explicit donations, those who complete college typically have more (in monetary / wealth terms) economic activity, which has positive external effects (including, but not limited to, taxes paid to the government).</p>
<p>If an intellectually capable person is prevented from accessing the education that would develop his/her capabilities, then that is typically a loss for everyone.</p>
<p>Oh, that’s what I meant. Their increased economic contribution to the state (who paid for their subsidy) would likely be a higher percentage than that paid back by the average alum to my alma mater.</p>
<p>And that, of course, is the whole reason that states have public schools, including universities and additional education subsidies*.</p>
<p>*Including both discounted tuition for in-state residents, financial aid for poorer in-state residents, and sometimes below-cost out-of-state tuition to attract out-of-state students to come and eventually settle after completing their bachelor’s degrees.</p>