More than half of the students at U of M come from families who make $250k+
So definitely no lack of high SES here.
Oh give me a freaking break. There are less than 100 colleges in this country- out of over THREE THOUSAND- where low income students may graduate without debt due to a college meeting full need.
You know what the vast majority of low income students do? Graduate with at least direct loans in debt IF they graduate at all… because, you know, that pesky not being able to afford college thing often gets in the way even at low cost directionals.
The minute size of the bubbles some people live in never fails to astonish me.
Go get to know some low income kids. Find out where 99% of their college-bound friends go. And then learn why less than half of their friends don’t go to or won’t finish college at all.
@AREYOUTHEONE
“We don’t tell poor families to choose the Toyota.”
That’s because they can’t afford Toyotas!
“They can’t afford these expensive colleges but everyone tells them to apply anyway and get aid.”
Not on CC, they don’t! “Everyone” here will tell you “love your safety” – and affordable is the #1 criteria in a “safety school.”
“Why are the upper middle class… the subject of finger wagging?”
Because they’re being ridiculous?
I mean that not everyone works hard or reached their potential at school or work. Be honest. We know kids in our classes who screwed around and people who failed to show at work the day after a holiday. There is a myth that EVERY lower income person tries very hard to earn more. That is not true, thus, for good reason. I did not say lower income kids should be punished. I said that upper income kids should not be punished and that one is not better than the other. The fact that the parent of one child has a roof over their head does not mean that that child deserves debt. I am talking upper middle class, not the super wealthy who can afford to pay without debt. And if a Toyota is good for the student with UMC parents then it should be good enough for the student with parents of lower income. Both students are in a deficit position and both are equal.
Also I didn’t say they were a rarity. Furthermore, my whole point was that some UMC families struggle more than people know and they don’t get sympathy and are told to settle for less and shut up. We want to help poor people go to college but don’t care if some become poor by going to college.
I’m insulted by the inference that not only are the NE publics sub-par but that even if the NE student travels to the south or the southwest for a free education, they are also sub-par. No matter where the upper middle class student from NE goes, it will be settling for less than he/she should get.
To that I say “don’t come.” Don’t take a big scholarship from Oklahoma or ASU or Alabama of UF. Don’t take their offers of free tuition, of a bonus to study abroad, of research opportunities. Settle for nothing below Middlebury and Colby and Penn, and don’t even consider Colorado College or Rice or Carleton. OMG, they require a plane ride to get there.
@AREYOUTHEONE
“I said that upper income kids should not be punished”
So… you buy into the idea that a public school is punishment?
There are a few handfuls of schools in the United States that are both need-blind in admissions and which meet financial need. Several of those (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford) are so generous in their aid that households earning significantly above $100k will get significant FA. OK, maybe you’re in a household with two adults each earning $100k, a high cost of living, and your kid is going to have to pay full rack rate at Yale, while the kid from the family earning <$60k a year is attending entirely free.
That’s one of the very few cases where the poor families “apply anyway and get aid”…IF they’re admitted. Because it’s much much much more likely that a kid from an upper middle class family will be accepted to those tippy-top-in-selectivity schools.
For hundreds if not thousands of other expensive colleges, there’s much less aid. The poor kids who get into those schools can’t afford to attend; if they somehow manage it, they come out with huge debt. And they don’t have a backup system of an upper middle class family that can help them manage the debt, come up with first and last month for an apartment, provide them with a strong credit rating to start out with (courtesy of being included on mom or dad’s credit card), and all of the other ways in which a well-off family provides a safety net.
There are an awful lot of students at pricy schools attending on inherited money or on their family’s significant wealth. Rather than punching down and blaming the poor students for getting a free ride, why not take a look the other way?
@katliamom
You have proved my key point. Momof2kids said go where you can afford to go and used Toyota as an example of choosing less. Again, we don’t tell poorer kids that.
Everyone on CC - and I have been on it for 5 years- encourages people who are in deficit to apply for aid so they can go where they want. But tell UMC students they should settle for less than what they want.
And now for the key point. I’ve advised you that many UMC families are struggling and in deep college debt and you call them ridiculous. That is exactly the lack of empathy I am talking about that is applies even when both families are in debt. UMC families are not buying diamonds and eating lamb instead of saving for college. Remember that a college tuition of $70k after tax dollars is the entire after tax income of many a UMC family and most of it for most others.
“I’ve advised you that many UMC families are struggling and in deep college debt”
– they’re in deep college debt because they bought Lamborghinis when they could only afford Toyotas. Sorry – that’s simply a bad decision. They should be angry – at themselves, not the school they chose to keep up with the Joneses.
@katliamom You really must stop mischaracterizing what I said. I said that UMC kids are told to accept what they don’t want. I didn’t say anything about public universities. When I spoke of punishment I was talking about debt.
We tell poorer kids that all the time on the financial aid forum. Repeatedly. Same for middle class kids and upper class kids. First question always is “what is your family’s budget?”
The financial aid forum is a place that’s very much of the roll up your sleeves and get to work. It’s not a place where people are going to be spending time comforting upset parents. Because the important thing is to help students find places they can afford. Most of what you’ll see on offer here is Yugos.
@katliamom Middle class families are not buying Lambos. What I said is that they are NOT buying luxuries. What usually prevents college saving is the purchase of a safe neighborhood and decent school. But there you go again, completely denying the plight of a class you don’t seem to be familiar with.Nothing I said denied the needs of the poor. I was explaining the needs of another group. In closing, the poor are not the only group in need and they are not necessarily any more noble than anyone else.
@SlitheyTove You have missed my point. The UMC family who still has good credit and can back up the kid’s debt is not the family I am talking about. I think you guys just really don’t understand that they don’t have $100k of extra income around. I am not punching poor kids. Give them the aid. Just stop telling middle class kids that it’s just too bad for them. I am advocating an expansion of aid, not a reduction. Also something overlooked is that just because you have a higher income when you apply to college doesn’t mean you always had it and always had money to save.
1 Like
I’ve said what I had to say, and am leaving this conversation.
@katliamom Of course I do. I’m not really sure what you’re reading into my posts, but it seems to be the opposite of what I’m saying.
@AREYOUTHEONE - They’re not graduating without debt. Show me some numbers that haven’t been invented in your delusional mind and then we’ll talk. “We don’t tell poor families to choose the Toyota.” Are you serious right now? But you’re right. We tell them to take public transit and then refuse to adequately fund transit because MUH TAXES! My god you’re balmy. Maybe try to think lucidly and make rational arguments if you want to be taken seriously on a forum about higher education.
You’ve missed mine…and several other posters’. Among other things, helping with a student’s college debt does not necessarily mean paying it off in one lump sum. It can mean helping with payments, something that is possible for many upper middle class families. Maybe not yours, but we are talking broadly here.
You seem to be switching back and forth between upper middle class and middle class families. Which is it? Or is it both?
Then you’ll want to talk to the colleges. Aid comes from donations, higher tuition from those who are full pay, and endowment, among other sources. It is up to the college to decide how it wants to apportion aid, because most don’t have the resources to expand aid without expanding their income.
While the number of graduating high school seniors in the US may be flat, I’ll bet that the total number of students entering college has increased. With more foreign students coming for undergrad and more US students going to college because jobs requiring only a HS diploma have disappeared or have now a higher educational barrier to entry, the entering college cohort is larger.
The sooner you all get over the erroneous assumption that lower income students have less, rather than far more, barriers to paying for college, that they take out less, rather than more loans, and that they overall have an easier time of it, the happier you’ll be.
All of that is absolutely false. There; feel better?
Lower income students are far, far, more likely to drop out or take longer to finish college, than your kids. I worked for many years with lower income students struggling to stay in college. You have NO IDEA what it’s like for them.
(Also, if you think being poor is easier, by all means, ditch your six figure income, your nice house, your retirement plans, your good health insurance, and give it a go! 
).
@PurpleTitan
Not sure how you define endowment “earnings” (IRR? Dividend Yield? Fixed Income Yield?), but in any case, returns on endowment are just part of a university’s income from assets. Let us not forget that donations continue to pour in, and these alone could cover tuition at a number of top schools. The very top schools are significantly underpriced relative to what the market would bear. On the other hand, they could afford to make tuition free. But there is an optics problem because the top schools have high percentages of one-percenters (there are like 38 schools where students from the top 1% [$630K+] are equal in number to students from the bottom 60%), and it would look bad to give a free ride to the children of so many millionaires.
The current system is fine for the truly wealthy, and for the truly poor especially if URM. The people in the upper middle class truly do get the shaft. Middlebury, which has been mentioned here quite a bit, has 23% of its students from $630K+ income families, vs. 14% from the bottom 60%. That right there is an optics problem for Middlebury et al, so they will want to concentrate FA on the bottom 60% to appear less financially exclusive than they actually are. Those in the upper middle class, say 80th to 95th percentiles, will include a lot of excellent students, but won’t find it easy to pay out of cash flow a la the top 1%, and of course won’t find it as easy to get FA as the bottom 60%.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html?_r=1
“Middlebury, which has been mentioned here quite a bit, has 23% of its students from $630K+ income families, vs. 14% from the bottom 60%”
So that totals 37%, right? That leaves 63% of the remaining students as upper middle class, the ones that some hear are complaining about getting shafted. 63% of students that are not the very, very wealthy and not in the bottom 60%! So, explain to me exactly how they are getting shafted? They are the majority.