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what about the children of middle class families who don't quite qualify for assistance, but are very, very close. I am talking about the middle class parents who struggle.
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<p>cst: your definition of middle class is the top 2-3% income earners (~$200k+) in the US. If someone "struggles" at that level, they need some serious financial counseling. But, even for families with slightly less (~$150-175k income), P'ton provides grants instead of loans which, as mini has pointed out, is a defacto discount off of list price. token is correct - every state Uni provides a wonderful education at less than half the cost of the privates.</p>
<p>or at the very least contribute more to those not requiring need (since Princeton already meets 100% of need)??</p>
<p>So student is attending a school that meets 100% of need.
All families struggle to meet EFC- I think that is a given, unless you are like Jeff Bezos and have a little socked away.
If the students EFC is less than COA the EFC is "fair" but if the EFC is more than COA it * isn't * fair?</p>
<p>Calmom-"It seems to me that people who are concerned about the high cost of private college education should be putting effort into improving the quality of their in-state publics. Public universities ought to be affordable to all the residents of the state. Private colleges should be free to charge whatever they want. </p>
<p>Maybe if the public universities were more formidable competition for the private colleges, the private colleges would have to offer more competitive pricing."</p>
<p>I could not agree more with this statement. I think that it is imcumbent upon every citizen of the state in which they live to help support funding to make their state universities the best that they can be. All those living in that state will ultimately benefit from it.</p>
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Interestedad, Many of the schools we are looking at, those with significant endowments, have price tags above $40K per year (with fees you approach $45K). Take at look at the Ivies for starters.
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<p>Those are the schools I'm looking at. The average net price charged to students (after financial aid discounts) is usually in the $25,000 to $30,000 range for tuition, room, board, and fees.</p>
<p>Colleges are priced like airlines. Some customers pay full-fare. Others fly for a fraction of that price based on an algorithm of variable discounts designed to fill the available seats.</p>
<p>When we are looking at college financials (as we are in this thread) rather than the cost for an individual student, we have to look at the AVERAGE price charged by the college.</p>
<p>The average or net price has little or no bearing on the middle income family that struggles to pay FULL tuition, room and board. As you can see from the table below, there are plenty of people at elite schools who are paying full freight. Do you really believe the full payers are all the sons and daughters of the super rich?</p>
<p>Class of 2009 % of Students on Financial Aid (U.S. News & World Report)</p>
<p>Anyone not getting financial aid at Princeton is rich. If the person doesn't admit to being rich, that just shows the person's lack of perspective on what most people's incomes and assets are.</p>
<p>Someone who is full pay at a private college has an income of well over $200k and/or assets of $1MM. In essence, you are suggesting that the top 3% of the US income earners are middle class -- it just ain't so. By definition, full payers have to be Upper income since 97% of the US population makes less. </p>
<p>Now perhaps someone with a $200k income may not feel wealthy, but that is an issue for a different discussion.</p>
<p>I must disagree with your above post (I don't know how to highlight it and copy it to here). My oldest happens to be at P'ton and he did receive a small grant last year along with work-study. We were very close to $100k in income and received no aid from any of the other private schools that accepted him (many of which are on that top endowment per student list). Aside from our home, we have little in savings. We were VERY grateful for the aid and realize that my husband's raise will kick us out of receiving any aid for next year. We have three more entering college over the next four years and share three cars for five drivers, one of which is a 14 year old wood paneled station wagon which the kids hate to have to drive. We scrimp, we do everything ourselves, we rarely eat out, etc. Could we live easier if we had pushed first born to attend our very good state schools? Yes. But it wasn't the right choice for him and so we are glad to pay and don't complain. But please don't think that everyone who is not on financial aid at a private college has income well over $200k and/or assets of a million. It just isn't anywhere near the truth.</p>
<p>Another interesting aspect to the whole financial aid picture which hasn't been mentioned is that grant money is not taxed as income, whereas what most pay comes from post-tax dollars. So for every grant dollar there is an implicit increase in its actual worth equal to the recipient's parental income tax rate along with the 7.65% kicked in for social security and medicare. In some states, this can be a significant amount. There would actually be a point at which earning an extra dollar would disqualify one for financial aid and wind up costing more than that dollar earned because of the pretax/posttax issue. Of course with loan aid, this is immaterial as they will be paid back with the same post tax dollars, but for grants like Princeton gives it becomes an interesting factor.</p>
<p>Thank you sewbusy. So many comments are made here without any support whatsoever, it's scary. You are exactly the type of person I have tried to describe.</p>
<p>The financial aid cutoffs at Princeton and Harvard are upper-middle-class incomes. In the general population incomes at the cutoff are represented by affluent suburbanites, doctors and lawyers (and many plumbers, contractors, housepainters), small-to-medium size business owners. Within the HYP population it may be that a disproportionate fraction of those ineligible for aid are actual plutocrats and bourgeoisie in the Karl Marx sense, but the cutoff per se is far from what is rich these days.</p>
<p>cst: for support, go to the CollegeBoard financial aid estimator. Plug in whatever numbers you like and watch the results. Better yet, try Princeton's Early Financial Aid Estimator.</p>
<p>Using $125k income, family size=4, one in college, no other assets, P'ton' efc is ~$30k, and that family would recieve $16k in grants. Same data but family size = 6 yields an efc of $27k, and grants of $19k. </p>
<p>At $175k, 6 kids, P'ton would still award a grant of $1-2k.</p>
<p>Charitable foundation are not supposed to keep accumulating asset without distributing it. That is why there is a law that there must be a minimum annual distribution of 5% of their asset. I think that the same rule should apply to college. Highlead's posting said they are spending 4 – 4.5 % of their endowment per year, so this is not asking them to do a lot more. And as highhead pointed out, this still allow their endowment to grow just by investment alone.</p>
<p>It is really up to the college to decide whether the extra spending should be used to cut tuition or build new research lab as suggested by ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad.</p>
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Someone who is full pay at a private college has an income of well over $200k and/or assets of $1MM.
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<p>That would depend on the college. Speaking only of Princeton, I'll stand by my statement in post #87. I'm sure there are colleges with much less financial aid.</p>
<p>It's one thing to be OK with the lack of financial aid to people earning $200K (and often a lot less), and another to redefine that income as "rich", "super-rich", and "wealthy". The upper end of US incomes has been stretched out enough since the Reagan years that, if that number ever indicated great wealth, it hasn't done so for a long time.</p>
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<li><p>The financial aid criteria are different for international students.</p></li>
<li><p>If you insist on US-to-international comparisons then some full-ride students might be considered "rich" by international standards. This renders the term even less meaningful.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>"Are they truly spending 4-4.5% of their endowment? Where did Higherlead get this percentage?"</p>
<p>higherlead got his numbers from the book "Tuition Rising" by Ronald Ehrenber. Ehrenberg is a faculty member and former college administrator at Cornell. I have seen similar numbers from other sources and indeed know for a fact that some schools are spending at a slightly higher rate.</p>
<p>If harvards endowment continues to triple every decade and the hold the student body relatively constant as they have been doing we could see 1:1 student faculty ratios or faclty retirement packages that would turn a corporate CEO green with envy.</p>
<p>BTW some of the fund managers Harvard had investing their money were pulling down 8 figure incomes making them the highest paid university employess in the world. I believe they have clamped a lid on that now. Harvard was also pretty much alone in actually managing its own investments as opposed to hiring outside investment management firms.</p>