I realize that this is sticker price, but still insane IMO.
http://www.courant.com/education/hc-trinity-tuition-increase-20180216-story.html
It is idiotic for middle or upper-middle class people to come up with this kind of money to go to Trinity College. There are similar liberal arts colleges in the center of the country that provide significant merit aid and significantly lower cost of attendance. I know this because I have two in just such schools now.
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From the article: “… there’s a vast difference between a college’s sticker price and what the average student pays after financial aid and government grants are distributed.”
Trinity is a meets-full-need school, so in reality students from middle or upper-middle class families aren’t paying “this kind of money” to attend Trinity.
I still think the high price, high aid model is broken.
Sure the sticker price is high, just like at hundreds of other schools. But if you’re going to pay something less, the sticker price is irrelevant. What matters is your net price after financial aid is applied.
" Trinity is a meets-full-need school, so in reality students from middle or upper-middle class families aren’t paying “this kind of money” to attend Trinity."
Some middle and upper middle class people are charged sticker price or close to it, particularly if they have home equity, any investments, or a small business. This is why there are dwindling numbers of students of middle-class background at places like Trinity College.
^^^
Yes, some students from middle or upper-middle class families will pay more, depending on a variety of reasons and the way that the school calculates need-based aid. This is in contrast to your wording in your first post in this thread, where you made the blanket statement that “It is idiotic for middle or upper-middle class people to come up with this kind of money to go to Trinity College.” The important point is this: it’s all about the net price. For some students from middle or upper-middle class families, the net price will be affordable. For others, it won’t be.
Very true, it is all about the net price. That being said, this is more interesting from a general trend point of view. One would think that taken to extremes there has to be a limit on the sticker price. But maybe not, there are still $200K Bentleys for sale out there.
Is this good for colleges overall, in the long run? I still don’t think so.
So…don’t apply to Trinity College. No one has to apply to a $70,000 a year college.
The adcom from Trinity was on the local public radio station this morning. He was blathering on about how federal aid was not enough and the formula needed to change. If I had been able to find the toll free number, I would have called in to tell him that even if the Pell Grant was doubled, it would still be a drop on the bucket for his college. Even if higher income families could receive the Pell Grant…it would be a drop in the bucket.
He went on to say that the college had to make up the need differential with institutional aid. So what? Does he think other private universities aren’t doing the same.
Private university costs are high. But no one is required to attend.
exactly, thumper. And for all the eye rolling and whining- colleges don’t show up at your house with a vacuum cleaner and suck the money out of your bank account. The people doing the complaining are usually the ones who willingly ran the NPC’s and even though their kids had significantly cheaper choices (and in some cases-- cheaper AND academically superior) decide to spend the money/go into debt over the private college.
That’s a choice. Like getting granite countertops instead of formica. I don’t think there’s a single person who walks into Home Depot who thinks that granite is cheaper than formica. They want what they want-- ok, I get it- so you’ll have to spend to get it.
We’ve got a thread going right now with a parent who is prepared to borrow 40K per year for a private college in NY. I don’t think the parent wants to hear that Binghamton, Stony Brook, Albany, Geneseo etc. can likely provide a better and more rigorous education for less money.
People spend what they want to spend.
“Some middle and upper middle class people are charged sticker price or close to it, particularly if they have home equity, any investments, or a small business.”
If parents have a small business, rental property, a small farm, or if the student’s dad is right at retirement age and has a significant percentage of retirement funds in a “normal” mutual fund rather than official retirement funds (IRA, 401k,…), then you basically just can’t go here.
Fortunately there are plenty of other alternatives. We have found some good ones for us.
“but still insane IMO.”
I agree completely. IMHO this will continue until a large majority of people just refuse to pay it, and refuse to take on loans to cover it.
Maybe the question is, can these privates continue to raise sticker prices to ridiculous levels, in a vacuum, with absolutely no influence on the college system overall, as long as there are still other affordable options? May be true, depending on the definition of affordable, I guess.
I bet Trinity saw an increase in applications this year. 
@doschicos there may be a point where it becomes almost a little shameful to go to a crazy expensive college, where you don’t want to admit it since it is perceived as wasteful. I think High Point got that reputation a little bit, as a place where the super rich kids go to the “country club” college. Could affect employability actually.
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A large majority of families with college age kids would not be paying list price, since to pay list price probably means being in the top 3% or 5% or some such income/wealth range, which may include the top edge of “upper middle class” as well as the plutocrat class.
However, Trinity seems to attract (or perhaps chooses to admit) mostly students who get no FA (59% according to https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=trinity&s=all&id=130590 ), so students from that small slice of the income/wealth scale are hugely overrepresented. But it could be that many of those students are from the plutocrat class who would not be sensitive to these increases in list price, rather than the top edge of the “upper middle class” that is best represented on these forums.
Such list price increases affect only a small slice of students (the top edge of the “upper middle class”), while schools with good financial aid will insulate students from less well off families from list price increases, and those from plutocrat class families are unlikely to care about what is pocket change to them.
What is more relevant to most potential college students and their families are the prices and FA policies of their in-state publics, which tend to serve as baseline lower cost options. Where such in-state publics’ prices are relatively high and their financial aid poor (e.g. Pennsylvania), many students have much more limited options.
@Portercat If so, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. This country, the world, is obsessed with status, prestige, money, affluence, etc. I think you might be projecting too much of your own viewpoint and biases into your analysis.
As pointed out in the post above, many don’t pay sticker price anyway. For many families, schools like Trinity with generous FA are often cheaper options than in-state schools.
High Point is in its own strange, little world. It’s academic quality is not the same caliber as Trinity.
I spent some time at Trinity College… the school did not suffer for lack of full-pay (often mediocre) students from very, very well-to families who are there because TC has a bit of a party school rep (it’s also often called Camp Trin.) These kids subsidize the many accomplished undergrads who receive TC’s (often generous) financial aid.
People have strange ideas about spending on education. Whether it’s “the greatest gift” you can give your kids or something you have to do like paying to fix a broken leg. It appears many people don’t think of it as real money in the same way as they would when deciding how much to spend on a house or car. To me that’s a more serious issue than an obsession with status.
Maybe everyone should be forced to count out a stack of $20 bills and pay their college bill in cash, so they can see how much money is really involved. Better still would be to offer your kid the cash difference between one college and another when they are making the decision.
@Twoin18 – Schools like Trinity College were built (and still largely cater to) people who wouldn’t consider $72,000 a lot of money. Many of them were paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for private and/or boarding schools for 12 years before their kiddos started college.
Like it or not, “real money” is relative. And in our increasingly economically stratified society, it will only get worse.
@katliamom Absolutely. But I’m more interested in people who would have to pay full tuition but would consider it a life-changing amount of money if they did that.
I see lots of threads saying “don’t take out $40K in loans per year to bridge the gap in cost between in-state flagship and private OOS college” and no-one suggesting that offering your kid the option of $40K per year in cash (say for a home downpayment) if you can just about afford both is a good idea. Instead I see suggestions of “spend it on the next kid” or “save it for the grandkids”. To me that indicates that people don’t think about spending on education as “real” money in the same way they do for as other spending. What is it that’s different about education?