^^
Say what? Perhaps wrong attribution? I would never have said such a thing. I have long said that Pells should not be given to students at well endowed schools like H and now that you mention it, I’d throw in Work Study as well. (Actually, I’ve said that Pells shouldn’t be given to students at any private school.)
And yes, al2, it is a public policy issue; I’d rather funnel that cash to public colleges and Unis. To paraphrase your line, “I don’t think it’s a national tragedy that a relatively small number of Pell grant students…” don’t attend HYPSM. But it would be a tragedy if these kids could not attend college at all. (Of course, that wouldn’t happen, since HYPSM would just dip into the bulging endowment to fund those low, low income students, by replacing the Pell & Work Study with HYSPM grant money. Win-win.)
If people want more Pell Grants and work-study cash going to public unis, why don’t they just just get Congress to loosen up some additional funding? The fact is that Harvard, being at the top in it’s sector, uses money far more effectively than the other options.
The states own public colleges. The federal government don’t. Why should the federal government money (Pell grant) cover public state colleges?
Pell Grants and WS are specific programs administered by the Feds. If it’s just cash at the state schools you want, I agree that the citizens of such states should loosen up their tight little pursestrings.
I don’t understand this obsession with public vs. private colleges. The University of Michigan gets just 5% of its budget from the state, or 9% if you throw out its hospital system. 91% of the budget looks like that of any private research university.
With only 9% of the budget coming from the state, how on earth is Michigan even considered a “public” university? Hell, 5% of the budget comes from the athletic department, and no one is going around saying that the university belongs to the football coach (though Bo Schembechler certainly had his moments 
). It isn’t like K-12 where almost all the money comes from the state/local govt.
I think a poor student who’s on a Pell grant can get a great education at a private school like Harvard. I think they can get a horrible education at a public school like Crappy Community College that has a 20% graduation rate. Seems to me we should be focused on helping poor students get the best education they can, wherever that is. And with financial aid, Harvard is cheaper for poor students than Crappy Community College or the University or Michigan is. So you’re just punishing them.
And yes, I think that if we didn’t allow poor students to attend Harvard with their Pell grants then Harvard would probably make up the difference with its own money (after cutting somewhere else) - not because they have to, but because it’s the right thing to do. You can probably find other ways to punish schools like Harvard too. But as the saying goes, “For the poor you always have with you” - it’s also true that, after you make yourself happy by tearing down the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, there will always be a new set of “richest” schools. Then we can direct the two-minute hate against them next.
Do as your conscience permits; just don’t take it out on low-income students.
How can u possibly compare the graduation rates of the two, when Harvard has a cherry-picked collection of students.
I didn’t. Perhaps you should re-read the paragraph. If my writing isn’t clear or if English isn’t your native language then it would be my privilege to explain further.
@al2simon
There’s absolutely nothing wrong w my English. But your paragraph that I highlighted implies that the education at CCs stink because of their 20% graduation rate.
I’ve already conservatively calculated that the per capita annual earnings on harvard’s endowment is well over 100k. So tell me again why poor students will suffer at harvard w/o pells grants?
Regardless of what was written, I am puzzled, GMT. You don’t think that a 20% graduation rate impacts the general education at CCs?? Whether students are cherry picked for Nowhere CC or RIT or Stony Brook, the graduation rate effects what goes in in classrooms, major requirements, social networking, faculty attitudes, etc.
My point was that there is nothing magical about being a public college that guarantees the education will be any good. All I said was that the exact same student might possibly receive a better education at Harvard than at a community college with a bad graduation rate. I didn’t say every CC had a bad graduation rate - you did. But surely you can’t believe that every CC with a bad graduation rate is doing a great job and it’s just because of the student population it serves. There could be bad advising, faculty who don’t care about teaching, embezzlement, etc. And even if the CC is doing everything perfectly, isn’t it possible that because of the student population it serves it can’t teach courses at anything other than a basic level? So the education a talented yet poor student received wouldn’t be as good, but you’d happily allow them to use their Pell grant there but not at Harvard. Seems wrong to me. That’s all I was saying.
Did you send your own kid to a CC with a 20% graduation rate? Did the thought even cross your mind? Be honest now.
Because, although I think Harvard would continue to admit poor students and fill-in the missing funds, there’s no guarantee that they will. Maybe they’ll admit fewer low-income students. So there’s a chance some poor students won’t be able to attend. Since Harvard is often cheaper for them than an alternative like their public college, you are hurting the student.
And even if Harvard does decide to continue to admit just as many poor students, it’s possible that other schools you think of as “rich” won’t. If you demonize these schools, isn’t it possible that the alumni have the following reaction: You think our school isn’t worthy of receiving Pell grant funds? - well, we’ve got 30,000 other students who aren’t poor who are desperate to be admitted, so who are we to argue with you? We’ll give you exactly what you asked for, good and hard.
al, your logic escapes me. Your two statements below can be mutually exclusive. And to assume that they are not, enters facts not in evidence.
Even you believe that the Harvards of the world will continue to fund low income students, so clearly nothing is being taken out on them. But you are correct in that they may not, but the likelihood of that happening is <0.1%. The Pell dollars don’t even rise to the level of a rounding error in Cambridge.
Nor do the Pell dollars used at 25 small highly endowed universities rise to the level of a rounding error in the federal budget or your tax bill. They just give low income people the opportunity to attend a college of their choice and within their abilities.
I don’t know what a community college with 20% graduation rate is doing, but I could believe that they do help people from very poor educational backgrounds learn something, whether it is basic math skills, basic writing skills or just how to behave in a way that is professional and academic. If this works for them, and CCs are very low cost and low frills, then I think maybe it is worthwhile. What is scarier is a for-profit high tuition school with room and board that our tax dollars are supporting through unpaid loads or grants or whatever, that provide nothing to their students except a year of pretending to be college students followed by car-size debt without the car.
Obviously someone who can go to Harvard shouldn’t be in a bottom tier CC, they belong in a mid to flagship state U or well, if they can get into a top 5 or top 40 school with lots of aid, they should go for it.
There are a lot of universities and a lot of varieties of social engineering going on.
Harvard seems particularly good at staying at the top of the the impressive US education market and making their alumni so rich and so happy with their experience that they continue to shower the school with contributions. If we want to reward schools that have rich, successful, happy alumni, maybe that is a reason to stop thinking of them as another piggy bank to raid.
There are other charities / non-profits that also do not disburse much of their funds.
Look, I was a full Pell student. Taking away Pell from Harvard and the like is not going to limit the opportunities for poor students. Pell is peanuts at places with endowments that high. With private Us routinely running 40k+ a year, the 5xxx coming from full Pell students (which are a pretty small minority) is not making a huge difference.
However, redirecting funding from private schools to public via limiting (and increasing) Pell could make a world of difference to a low income student whose current Pell doesn’t even make a significant dent in some public school costs.
As for U of M, it’s still a public. Thanks to our wonderful legislature, it is barely a public but it is a public nonetheless. It’s not the U’s fault that our state can’t get their crap together and properly fund higher ed.
@al2simon
Your argument that poor kids will be denied the opportunity to attend harvard & other rich private universities if the kids don’t have the opportunity to apply pell grants there is beyond ridiculous.
My kids attend/ed painfully expensive private boarding schools. Private K-12 receives no federal aid, yet these schools are committed to socioeconomic diversity. The tuition at these schools is the same as a private university, and the cost to educate these students is well in excess of the tuition-- just like at elite private universities. Endowment & annual fund donations make up the difference. Nearly half of the kids receive FA, and many poor outreach kids are enrolled with a full ride scholarship which even includes funds for clothing.
If these dinky boarding schools w/o multi-billion dollar endowments can support poor kids w/o federal grants, then so can harvard.
Fortunately, I don’t think the prohibition that you want against using Pell grants at elite colleges by poor students is likely to happen.
But if it does, then I sincerely hope that you are 100% right and I am 100% wrong.
I will say that many years ago I was quite involved in this issue and served on commissions that helped push for some changes. I am proud to say that thanks to the work we and many, many others did, the percentages of Pell-eligible students who attend elite colleges have more than doubled over the last 20 years. Just at my college, I know we directly affected the lives of a couple thousand low-income students. I have met many of them over the years, both to hear about their experiences and to figure out how to continue to improve access. The issue is complex, but I perhaps I can share just two themes that are quite clear in the research that’s been done.
First, even the smallest financial barriers can represent a mountain that a low-income student must overcome. I’m not even talking about getting good financial aid to pay for tuition and fees. Back then, we found that waiving the $30 application fee made a big difference to students being able to apply. Even getting waivers created so that students didn’t have to pay the $8 to send their SAT scores helped increase the number of applications. Sometimes it is very hard for people to understand the financial constraints these students live under. Since I know the obstacle that $8 represented, I am very worried about the barrier that telling a student that they won’t be able to use their $6000 Pell grant at an elite college will create even if the schools’ financial aid packages get increased.
Second, because they don’t have the money to pay for a lot of the “extras”, many low-income students don’t feel like they are truly a part of the college community. They often feel estranged both from the communities that they came from and from their fellow students. I am extremely sensitive to making them feel like second-class citizens, so I am very opposed to sending any signals that society doesn’t want them to attend an elite college. And I believe that telling them that we won’t allow them to use their Pell grant at an elite college sends a pretty strong signal.
It’s not like the kid gets a Pell check in the mail and then decides where to spend it. If the school meets full need, then it meets full need. Period.
@GMTplus7 - If I may ask, were you on financial aid and did you get a Pell grant when you were in college? In my case, the answer is yes to both questions.
It’s just not that simple. The research is crystal clear. A big chunk of the problem is that low-income students DON"T EVEN APPLY. That’s the whole point behind the $8 SAT waiver data point.
I came from a middle class family and had a MERIT scholarship.
Low income kids have Questbridge to steer them.
Personally, one of my distinct memories from high school was sitting with my father trying to figure out how we would assemble the money to pay for my college tuition and fees. I remember having a sheet of paper with my national merit scholarship, my Pell grant, my loan, etc, trying to get the total to work out. I remember counting on a calendar the exact number of days in the summer that I could work so that I could earn as much money as possible and convince my father that it was possible for me to go. I was acutely conscious of my Pell grant, and I am extremely grateful to the taxpayers and everyone else who helped make these programs possible.
ADDED:
That is great. I don’t think Questbridge existed when I was a kid.
I have to say that even nowadays most people do not think that low-income students get enough support through the college process. Respectfully, I think it is conceivable that the need for help is greater than what Questbridge can provide.