<p>How did he manage to serve as President for any amount of time? I just read Wiki on him, and was shocked not only about his comment on women, but on third world countries and pollution.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow. I really scorn people donating their hard earned money to politicians, but making a charitable donation to a $20B hedge fund has to take the Cake [TM Pizza].</p>
<p>Those must have been some nifty marketing materials.</p>
<p><a href=“and%20have%20previously%20advocated%20taxing%20its%20endowment”>quote</a>.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Have a change of heart now? I think when their endowment is taxed and the donations are after-tax, private schools are freer to do whatever they please. At this point, I view their endowment, just like employer sponsored health benefit and home mortgage interest write off, as government assistance, similar to but much larger than food stamps.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>His [Remarks</a> at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce](<a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber.php]Remarks”>http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber.php) made sense to me.
There is no reason that great scientific talent must be equally distributed equally among the sexes. Because of their obsession with “diversity”, universities silence discussion of group differences. A recent example of this is the bullying of a Harvard law student by Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow, described in [Who’s</a> Bullying Who? - Wendy Kaminer - The Atlantic](<a href=“Who's Bullying Who? - The Atlantic”>Who's Bullying Who? - The Atlantic) . Universities betray their mission if they are not willing to pursue the truth wherever it leads.</p>
<p>Oh, Beliavsky, could you just come out and say what you think? Asians are smarter than whites, who are smarter than blacks and Hispanics. Women aren’t as good in science as men are. There shouldn’t be any financial aid - sticker price is sticker price, pay it or go elsewhere. College admission should be solely on SAT scores or other strictly objective criteria, and if it results in a college of 80% Asian math majors from California who are from well to do backgrounds, so be it. For someone obsessed with “veritas,” you’re being coy about what it is you truly believe.</p>
<p>PG, how have I been coy if you are sure of my views on so many topics?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Harvard requires no parental contribution for income <= 60K and no more than 10% up to an income of $150K. Above that the “marginal tax rate” gets much steeper, as I showed earlier. I’d prefer a system where every family is required to pay 10K and the marginal tax rate is 10%, so that a 100K family pays $20K and a $300K family pays $40K. If you required all families to contribute substantially you might be able to reduce the list price to this level. Kids from poor families might have debt of $40K after four years if their families could not or did not contribute.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah. The 30k family pays 10k, the 100k family pays 20k and 300k pays 40k.</p>
<p>Easy math: 33% - 20% - 13%</p>
<p>Rich stay richer, poor have a higher wall to climb.</p>
<p>Why not just allow the 300k family to pay that same percent? 100k?
Still leaves them with plenty to keep food on the table.</p>
<p>I think either you have to rework this or mightily justify- without going into numerical theories.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hate to hijack the thread from the story of the three young ladies. Do you feel other even more fundamental areas (eg. food/shelter/clothing) that highlight the rich/poor divide should be priced as education? Should the same house in great community - safe, excellent school district, etc. go for $1M to a rich person making $300K but be subsidized to go for $100K to the 30K family? Should Walmart charge $30/gal milk for the first guy and 3 bucks for the second? To prevent the inequities you refer to, will we be better off where the price of everyhing is based on a % of salary?</p>
<p>Dad 3, if you are asking me, I do see it through the other lens: On 200k, you pay the same for a gallon of milk as the guy earning min wage. Smaller % of earnings goes toward essentials. Much more left over for discretionary, at higher income levels.</p>
<p>In general, I don’t have a problem with true discretionary spending- and am aware of some disservice done by the WalMarts. But, I don’t like the whining about poor millionaires. Not in the context of much less financially stable families. I don’t think I assign blame for poverty vs earned wealth-- nor to I vault the wealthy to some unique sainthood for their earnings.</p>
<p>Why should education, though, be treated like any other ‘product’? If it’s better for most members of society to be highly educated, then we should try to make this possible.</p>
<p>I would also like to add, as mentioned upthread, the Harvard’s generous financial aid is NOT typical. What Beliavsky mentions as what he desires for Harvard in terms of need based aid is what typically happens at most private colleges that don’t have billions in endowment.</p>
<p>For the liberal arts college I mentioned upthread, the 30K student pays about 20K. The 90K student pays about 30K. The 300K students pays about 40K (which is total cost of attendance), if these families get the lowest merit award. And as I said above, given that students from high income families tend to get higher SAT/ACT scores, and merit aid is determined by such scores, it’s likely that the 300K family is paying less than 40K.</p>
<p>The whole idea that low income families pay next to nothing for higher education is just misleading. Frankly, I don’t see how low income families afford any higher education.</p>
<p>But in a world view where the poor are where they are because they don’t have the innate talent or work ethic to succeed academically, there really is no need to make higher education available to low income families, and in fact is counterproductive because it’s a waste of resources. I’m sure that there are many on this thread that believe such a scenario.</p>
<p>Every family should contribute 10k? So what if your family makes below that?</p>
<p>Then, Alexissss, as suggested by one or two here, you simply eat cake. Cake mysteriously appears in your kitchen. Everything is fine.</p>
<p>It sure seems some want your family, even if they had 2k income, to ante up or stay away. Horrors to a system that would put a bright kid in a good college at a reduced cost- and make the wealthy pay list. Why, that’s Robin Hood. Thievery. And, your stats are probably lower and your grades probably inflated. And, if you are URM, you probably don’t even have the inflated grades. And were stealing a spot from some more worthy kid, anyway.</p>
<p>What?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>PG, it seems you’re confusing the radical progressive leftist politics of the LAC classmates of my time there to what I actually believe. </p>
<p>However, on the issue of merit aid without accounting for income…it does overlap to some extent for two reasons. </p>
<p>One is that it has a tendency to reduce the pool of money colleges provide to need-based FA/scholarships as has been reported in the Chronicle and was the case at my own LAC. </p>
<p>Second, my feeling that it’s immoral for those who have the means to fully pay for a college education to be subsidized by the college…especially if their funds are so lacking they cannot provide sufficient need-based FA/scholarships for all admitted students from lower SES is derived more from a form of the quaint notion of noblisse oblige. </p>
<p>A reason why I find the idea of a child of a wealthy family being given merit aid to be morally offensive on some level. </p>
<p>A very notion that I believe we actually agree with to some extent considering you’re one of the higher SES who openly states her gratitude for being able to be a full-pay parent.</p>
<p>@lookingforward </p>
<p>Awww. T_T lol I’m so glad my colleges don’t feel that way!</p>
<p>And about rich kids getting merit aid, here’s something: <a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>It seems like he’s earning his keep. He has to entertain a bunch of people, similar to professional sports.</p>
<p>I thought his dad donated that much or more to the school, in response-?</p>
<p>Alexissss, wishing you the best. The system, as it is, has flaws, but does good for many kids. Just make sure you don’t fall into the issues noted in the article. Get support, when needed.</p>
<p>@lookingforward </p>
<p>Thank you very much!</p>
<p>The Justin Combs thing has been discussed on here before. If the kid earned the football scholarship honestly by his playing, I see no reason that his father’s wealth has anything to do with anything. Good for him. </p>
<p>My nephew at Princeton was offered a scholarship at Vanderbilt since he’s the kind of student Vandy wants. The daughter of a friend of mine has some big scholarship at USC that is essentially full tuition. Both come from able-to-pay full freight families. They earned those things; I don’t see why they shouldn’t take advantage of them. Beliavsky, just curious if you have a problem with MERIT aid (based on some combo of scores and an application process) going to well to do people.</p>