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Because when book an airline ticket or buy a banana, I don’t get charged a percentage of my income</p>
<p>Right, because neither the ticket nor the banana is sold by a not-for-profit organization that gets enormous tax benefits in exchange for promoting the public good.</p>
<p>But @GMTplus7, access to an airline doesn’t produce the same desirable effect that access to a good education does.
Education is a special good/service distinct from an airline ticket.</p>
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By that argument, then make it free-for-all like public K-12.</p>
<p>I would go for that.</p>
<p>While I don’t like high tuition, I would say that for once the government needs to keep its dirty nose out of it. Seriously, just because something “seems” unfair, that doesn’t mean its the government’s job to intervene (i.e. mess everything up). Also, higher taxes would stink and I do not support the expansion of the national debt. If tuition rates get high enough, people will stop going and find cheaper ways to attend college, such as community colleges, and tuition will be forced to drop to attract students. (this could take some time, however)</p>
<p>^^^^Ahh yes, the good ole ‘government is the problem’ argument. That is so early 1980s.
How many posts in this thread have you read?</p>
<p>SKRLVER – that WaPo article is great. The AVERAGE tuition discount at private colleges is 42%!!! Crazy, but that’s how competitive markets work.</p>
<p>There’s no economic reason why a private college couldn’t go “every day one low price” and get rid of the inflated sticker and the big merit aid. But who wants to go to Walmart University? Better to go to Nordstrom University, but with a great deal made available only to a few (actually not so few) extra special/smart customers like you. Even if the net price at both places is the same.</p>
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U think the gov’t is not involved in paying for higher education???</p>
<p>northwesty–It reminds me of what happened at JC Penney’s. The former CEO came in and got rid of the sales and just marked down prices. Customers were not happy.</p>
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<p><a href=“This J.C. Penney Worker Was Fired For Telling The Truth About Its 'Fake' Prices | HuffPost Impact”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>If you compare school districts across the country, they widely vary.
We have Pay for K, huge class sizes, outdated books.
Schools where students cannot afford graphing calculators, and where the districts can’t afford to furnish them.
High need schools which cant attract teachers, except for TFA with three whole months of training.
Or schools that have a Tesla S as a raffle item at their yearly fundraiser. ( don’t know who won)
IMO universities with need based aid are attempting to take the students who excelled despite high need,and give them a chance to see what they can achieve with the full resources of say a Harvard endowment behind them.</p>
<p>Like they say, the prestige is such at the competitive school that they easily could fill their student body with all full payers.
What reason could they possibly have to lower their price?
If they lowered their price to more closely approximate the COA of a public school, which offers little need or merit awards, would these full pay families still want their progeny to attend?
Probably not,because what would differentiate it from a public school if they no longer had the wherewithal to attract the really top students like my daughter?</p>
<p>The lower income top students in a world without need based aid, would be attending schools that were as cheap as possible. Probably joining the military to pay for college like my brother, or skipping it altogether like my H.</p>
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<p>That’s not what I’m referring to. You implied (I assumed relative meant the percentage of taxes paid going towards education) and the person you quoted explicitly stated that the more taxes you paid, the lesser the percentage of those taxes you paid go towards education. This makes no sense to me. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl
What does it take to be part of the cognoscenti? Is there a membership drive coming up?</p>
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<p>Well, now you’re just arguing against merit aid. I agree that schools that give merit aid could just cut all merit aid and reduce tuition for everyone, and I agree that the math would work and that arrangement would be more equitable. Schools that give merit aid but don’t meet full need are essentially taxing lower-stats students to subsidize high-stats students, which in many cases forces the poor to subsidize the more affluent. But that’s 180 degrees opposed to the position some others on this thread are taking–they’re opposed to subsidizing students with lower incomes, especially at the high-priced elite colleges that meet full need and give little or no merit aid, and some (e.g., gmt +7) are actually arguing FOR merit aid.</p>
<p>I also agree that, in principle, it makes no sense for public universities in states that have drastically reduced legislative appropriations for higher education to maintain a 2-tier tuition model. My alma mater, the University of Michigan, now gets only 6% of its annual operating budget from the state. Yet it subsidizes in-state students at a far higher rate, first by charging them 1/3 the tuition it charges OOS students, and then by meeting full need for in-state students but not for OOS students. This has the effect of skewing the OOS student population more affluent because admitted students without need generally can afford to attend, while OOS students with need often find it unaffordable. This works for the in-state students: their own legislature no longer subsidizes their education (or at least, not very much), but affluent out-of-staters will. And it works for the university financially. But it hurts the university in other ways, because it drives out many talented OOS students with financial need. They’re trying to fix this with a multi-billion dollar capital campaign that seeks to raise enough money to allow them to meet full need for all students, in-state or OOS. Essentially, that means adding several more billions to their already-large endowment ($8.4 billion as of 2013, 8th largest among all colleges and universities). But at that point it will have essentially become a private institution, and it’s hard to see what would justify maintaining a large tuition differential based on state residency. Politically, it seems unlikely to change, however. Some fiscally conservative legislators have flirted with the idea so they can eliminate even the pittance the university now receives, but the legislature doesn’t have a say in the university’s tuition policies. But the university is governed by an elected Board of Regents, elected by Michigan voters, and I can’t imagine any incumbent Regent or any serious candidate for that office going to Michigan voters and saying, “I’d like to double tuition for Michigan residents so we can make it more affordable for kids from New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and California.” </p>
<p>BC – my alma mater (UVA) gets even less state funding than UM does and has done all those same things. UVA’s law and business schools have (as a financial matter) gone private – they eschew all state money, charge in-state tuition that is about 90% of OOS, and now send a portion of the increased tuition revenue to the state side of the university. Financially it is a no brainer. Politically, it was possible for the small professional schools to privatize so long as it would not bleed over to the undergrad division. Has UM done the same for its professional schools too?</p>
<p>@bclintonk:</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you feel that it should be part of UMich’s mission to serve poor kids from outside of MI. I mean, it’s noble, but why do you think it hurts UMich to not do so?</p>
<p><<<<’
mom2collegekids wrote:</p>
<h1>and I dont’ want more fed aid. Too many games with that.</h1>
<p>@ucbalumnus
A federal Pell grant and direct loan cover only a small part of the costs of the most expensive colleges that are presumably the target of the complaints about high costs. Indeed, the chart of inflation-adjusted maximum Pell grants at <a href=“http://www.finaid.org/educators/pellgrant.phtml”>http://www.finaid.org/educators/pellgrant.phtml</a> shows that the maximum Pell grant amount have fallen by two thirds from 1976 to 2006 when adjusted by college tuition inflation, though it is down by a quarter from 1976 to 2006 when adjusted by CPI inflation.</p>
<p><a href=“Trends in Higher Education – College Board Research”>Trends in Higher Education – College Board Research;
<a href=“Higher Ed Index”>Higher Ed Index;
<h1>I.e. it isn’t federal financial aid for college students that is the driver of college cost increases at the colleges people complain about here.</h1>
<p>mom2collegekids wrote:
Divorced parents playing games so that the low-income parent’s income is used…when both parents are raising the kids.</p>
<p>Fed aid should only increase if both parents’ incomes will be used on FAFSA.</p>
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@ucbalumnus </p>
<p>How many divorced parents with plenty of college money are there playing FAFSA custodial games are there compared to divorced parents where a non-poor non-custodial parent is uncooperative with either contributing money or completing non-custodial parent financial aid forms, thus disqualifying the student from financial aid at most schools with decent financial aid?</p>
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<p>Either way, I don’t want more fed (or state) aid based on “custodial parent’s” income. The more that is given, the more incentives for people to cheat (pretend to be separated, divorced parents fibbing about who is custodial, etc)</p>
<p>No one is really checking that aspect of FAFSA. There are no “bed checks” lol…and </p>
<p>I think that divorce decrees, when minor/college aged kids are involved, need to address the college cost aspect. </p>
<p>@PurpleTitan Perhaps they can increase the talent of the student body if they broaden their horizons. Just a thought</p>
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<p>Not sure as a percentage of operating budget UVA gets less from the state than the University of Michigan does, though as a smaller school UVA probably gets less in absolute terms. But to your question, yes, the Michigan legislature long ago stopped funding Michigan’s law school. Michigan Law’s instate tuition is now slightly over 5% less than OOS tuition. Agreed, it’s easier to do this with professional schools that the legislature and the general public tend not to care about. But the people of the state of Michigan feel a greater sense of ownership over the undergraduate institution, which politically makes it harder to cut special preferences for state residents.</p>
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<p>I’ll answer your direct question first. It hurts the university because it lowers their yield, and as a consequence it lowers their selectivity and lowers the stats of their entering class. As a result, the student body is not as strong as it could be. Make no mistake, Michigan has an extremely strong student body, particularly given its size–arguably, only UC Berkeley and possibly UCLA educate comparable numbers of high-stats students. (It’s much easier to enroll a high-stats class if you enroll only 1/4 or 1/5 as many students as Michigan). But every year, thousands of highly qualified OOS admits who would like to attend the University of Michigan, including many who identify it as their first choice, decide that they’re unable to attend because it’s financially out of their reach, due to inadequate FA for OOS students. So if the university is to make the next step in strengthening the quality of its student body, meeting full need for OOS students is imperative. I’m pretty confident the current capital campaign will get them there. Then, look out! This is an institution on the rise.</p>
<p>The implied question is, why should any educational institution care about the poor? And more particularly, why should a state institution care about the OOS poor? I think this goes to the heart of what it means to be a university in our society. We give enormous tax benefits to colleges and universities. Contributions to them are tax-deductible. Their endowments grow tax-free, and they can cash in the capital gains on their investments tax-free. In most states, they pay no property taxes. In some states, they pay no sales taxes on their purchases. And they benefit from billions in direct and indirect subsidies–state aid to public universities, federal Pell grants and subsidized student loans, billions in federal research grants. What justifies all this taxpayer-funded largesse? Well, partly we value their research, which pushes the boundaries of human knowledge and leads to cutting-edge technological breakthroughs, which is good for the economy. But in part it’s because we have always believed that education is a public good; the more educated we are as a society, the better off we are likely to be economically, socially, culturally, politically. But I think we’re perilously close to losing sight of the public good aspect of higher education. A lot of people want to view it as a purely private transaction–it’s a service you can buy, and as an individual you’re just looking for the best return on investment. Nothing wrong with that in some ways, but if that’s all colleges and universities do, then to my mind it’s hard to justify all the public subsidies. I care about the public values of higher education. I think every college or university that receives any kind of public subsidy has obligations to the public. And one of the most important things colleges and universities can do is to serve as a springboard to upward social mobility. If the University of Michigan were substantially funded by the State of Michigan and Michigan taxpayers, then I’d say its primary obligation would be to Michigan residents. But at this point its direct and indirect federal funding is far more important than its state funding, and so I think its obligation is to the nation as a whole, far more so than to the state of Michigan. So bottom line, Michigan’s obligation to the nation is barely distinguishable from Yale’s. And given the massive public subsidies both receive, they both have an obligation to aid upward social mobility, rather than to operate as a vehicle to entrench social and economic privilege, which they are perilously close to becoming. </p>