You have a remarkable ability not to read the entire contents of posts.
i’m late to this conversation (and realizing that the thread has devolved into a million different directions 
but I wanted to compliment @Quietlylurking and @ClassicRockerDad for the original post & the first reply…you both made great arguments and I appreciate your intelligence & insights.
Doschicos, they get shafted because there are some kids who have the stats to get admitted who take a hard look at their finances and choose to go to their state flagship instead. And often, a state flagship with a stronger program than the one at Middlebury.
Cue the violins please.
Agree with @Portercat
“So, everyone thinks it is fine that college price increases have WAY outpaced inflation and just about everything else (including healthcare), and can continue to do so ad infinitum?”
I can’t believe how many people here are defending a 250K price tag for any student. Answer is always - too bad if you don’t want to spend 250K, you can go to your instate. Even if that in-state doesn’t have the programs your kid wants or is a location where your kid doesn’t want to be. Even though you are only full pay because you recently got a new job or had a good year in your small business. Even if the benchmark on CC is always the HPYMS net price calculator when the rest of the top 100 schools have a way lower threshold for full pay. If merit was removed from all schools like so many here are in favor of, the choice would be state school only for most people that don’t qualify for FA and don’t have 250 laying around.
This has taken the turn that the original OP predicted even though it was a calm and thoughtful post. Carry on, smug CC’ers.
Sorry Suzy, I’m not smug but the entitlement pouring out of some of the “woe is me, I can’t afford to be full pay at Bowdoin” posts are just a bit tone deaf. Especially when they go on to demonize the poor who have it so great.
I’m not defending the 250K price tag. But nobody needs to go to Bowdoin or fill in the blank. Nobody.
And the child of upper middle class parents–regardless of how they got there or how recently they got there- has social capital that the child of poverty can’t even dream about.
“If merit was removed from all schools like so many here are in favor of”
Having read this entire thread, I haven’t seen that at all. In fact several of us have stated to folks to seek out merit aid schools but it seems like those are considered undesirable to complainers who view them unacceptable due to location and/or rankings.
Huh? Seems like the poor families are often told to choose the used Plymouth or Mitsubishi.
The current system is not fine for the vast majority of the truly poor. It is ironic that you posted this right after garlands spot on post just above yours. In terms of low income students the current system is only fine for the very very small percentage of low income students who manage to overcome numerous obstacles and come out with high enough stats to be competitive at the few generous meets full need elite schools.
It seems to me the real issue is that students are being squeezed out at all levels/tiers by the pace at which COA is outpacing earning power. We as a nation are generally not doing a good job of prioritizing public education and making it truly accessible for everyone. That seems short sighted to me and I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot by not making education much more of a priority, K-12 and higher ed. Sure people with some means can still find good options but it does seem to be getting harder and there is a sense of fear about where is the tipping point and what is the future going to look like. Does it seem reasonable to tell a young family starting out that if they just put away a mortgage size chunk of money every month for each child from the day they are born that they should have plenty of options and not to worry? I agree with those on here who point out that the real tragedy is for the lower income students who truly can’t cobble together the funds to make it work or who start out with high hopes and have to drop out because they just can’t make it and then have the burden of debt without even a completed degree.
This is not a funding issue, but how those funds are spent. The number of teaching professionals has been roughly stable, but there has been an explosion in the number of administrators and bureaucrats in the past 30 years which have driven costs through the roof.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html
I live in NYS near NYC. A kid growing up near the subway can go to CUNY and live at home, for $6000/year.
If truly low income, they can get the $6k from Pell and NYS TAP grants, essentially making college free. Those middle class parents who have 2 decent jobs will have to pay the $6000 themselves, but on 2 decent salaries one should be able to afford $500/month (cut back on cable TV, and restaurant outings and you are almost there).
Having a son who went to CUNY, a wife and brother who went to SUNY at a similar cost for tuition (more for R&B but that’s a choice to live away from parents), I can say they all got adequate educations. I graduated from one of those expensive northeastern schools, and while I felt I got a good education, was not worth 3x the price IMO. These comments about having bad public schools in the northeast is elitist. SUNY/CUNY enrolls 500,000 students, that’s a large number of very inexpensive and perfectly useful degrees. If one can afford more and thinks that these privates are “better” that’s a choice you can make, no different than buying a Kia vs a Mercedes. We all have to make our choices.
I am lucky enough to have been able to allow my S1 to transfer to a private and S2 went straight to a private, both with some merit but still double the cost of SUNY. If I could not afford to do it or did not perceive value, then SUNY would be fine. But I can give up fancy vacations, eat out less etc, drive a less fancy and older car, that is a choice I was willing to make. I have the least expensive cars on my street, but with the most expensive stickers in the windows. We all make our choices, but they are choices…
Here in the upper midwest we have it relatively( will explain) good. A decent middle class house in a decent middle class neighbourhood costs $250,000. An upper middle class house neighbourhood starts at 350,000-400,000. University of Minnesota/ Wisconsin/Iowa will provide a decent or better education for 20-25,000/yr. Less if you are low income, or get merit aid.
Having said that, as a dual citizen, we have the option to send our S’s to some very good schools in Canada for about 60% of that. At what cost? Canadians pay WAY more tax than Americans.
I still remember the crap they used to serve(lived on Mulligatawny) in the Community college I attended, and existing on the cheap Goulash served in the Hungarian section of Toronto near U of T. I vividly remember my brothers awful lodgings in the McGill student ghetto, where the landlord kept the heat so low that you could find ice in the sink on January mornings.
It was a rite of passage to be a poor student. Students were expected to be thin, almost malnourished, and poor.
It’s not like that now. Food is spectacular. Students look like models. Weight rooms and recreational facilities are wonderful. Lodging is provided for all. Buildings don’t leak. Colleges look like the romantic getaway resorts that my wife and I could never afford( well, there were those two nights in Langkawi…). Colleges are expected to provide an “experience”, not an education. All this costs money.
My kids have the option of going to the aforementioned "elite(expensive)" LAC's, our very good State flagship, less good state schools, decent but unremarkable LAC's that will be affordable because of merit aid, or go out of the country for our education (probably Canada, in our case). The Middlebury's and NYU's of the world are the playgrounds of the rich, for the most part. I don't expect us to go there, just like I don't expect to buy a Jag, or a seafront house on Sanibel island.
I do have some sympathy for people on the coasts who's cost of living is high, but it sounds like there are affordable options there, too. You just have to get over the idea that your child "deserves" to attend an elite school.
Just because my younger daughter is in a wheelchair doesn’t mean I don’t have empathy for the child who breaks her leg. Be human.
Don’t be pedantic. I was talking about financial aid, not other obstacles that low SES students obviously face. This is a thread about FINANCIAL AID, not every life challenge anybody has ever faced.
Not unless your definition of upper middle class extends to those with annual income of $629,999, which is the cutoff for not making the top one percent per my linked NYT article. If you lower the bar to, say <$200K or <$150K, then you are talking about a much larger number of students, perhaps even the majority, who are above this line.
Actually think about that: Middlebury has 23% of kids from families making $630K+, vs 14% from families in bottom 60%.
Very apparent- did you read the OP’s thread? Two earner couple paying the AMT. And the anger is over:
“Middlebury, Tufts, Colby, Boston College, Lehigh, Cornell. These are now somehow “dream schools” with outrageous sticker prices.”
You can have all the empathy you want for the child who breaks her leg. But do you have empathy for the child who breaks her leg and thinks she has it worse than your daughter?
The idea of crying over a kid whose parents can’t afford Lehigh (but likely can afford their state flagship, or can get merit to make places like Alabama or Oklahoma honors programs affordable, or can likely afford to live at home and commute to a private U, or can get merit at Drexel or Muhlenberg, etc.) would require a lot more than empathy. I know lots of people like the OP. They can’t afford to be full pay at BC-- I get that. And I am empathetic. It’s the idea that their kid is too good for Providence with merit (if being at a Catholic school is important) or Binghamton (without merit) or Rutgers (depending on where in the Northeast they live) that I have trouble with. Or that getting on a plane to Alabama is a bridge too far. Or that commuting to Baruch is beneath them.
Some of the kids at these public colleges are absolutely stars. What’s wrong with sitting in class with them?
That’s where my empathy starts to trickle out…
If anyone wants an idea of the incomes affected by AMT, here you go: $200K-$1M for the most part.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/who-pays-amt#main
I’m going to say this as simply as I can.
The vast majority of the poor- very poor- are entitled to a Pell grant of just under 6k.
At the vast majority of schools, that is all they’ll get with Direct loans on top of that.
The poor are NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT getting great financial aid at the VAST majority of schools.
Why on earth is this so hard to understand??
I went to a top 100 school- public, instate. The only reason I was able to attend was because of a very large outside scholarship because the ~5k in Pell grant and the direct loans only paid for about 1/5 of the cost of attendance.
I was extremely, extremely lucky to get the scholarship as it only went to ~50 people in the US. These large outside scholarships are extremely rare and the public schools here just do not have the aid to make up the rest of that cost for poor students.
** The poor have very limited options since financial aid above federal aid is virtually non-existent at many schools. **
Stop with the myth that poor kids get aid. The vast majority don’t.
I’m out. There’s apparently no penetrating the bubble that some people have chosen to insulate themselves in and then poured cement around. They’re going to believe myths- reality be damned. I guess that’s what happens when we live in a post-factual society.
Disgusting.
The very, very poor, in addition to not being able to pay, have the problem that many are in high schools that don’t adequately prepare them for college. There was an excellent article in the NY Times yesterday, highlighting that while poor kids have ‘access’ to the good high schools in NYC, they really don’t, because their elementary schools in their poor neighborhoods, have not prepared them to gain entry to a good middle school, which in turn makes them not prepared for a top high school, which makes them not prepared to apply to college.
"The poor are NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT getting great financial aid at the VAST majority of schools.
Why on earth is this so hard to understand??"
@romanigypsyeyes You’re forgetting that they don’t care about the VAST majority of schools. They’re not good enough for their child!
We lived in the Northeast. Two incomes, hit by AMT - property taxes 23K on a tiny fixer upper. Sick kid, one car, old. frugal lifestyle. Almost zero savings in the four years we lived there. That was in the year 2000. We don’t live there now thankfully due to a job relocation many years ago. I get that frustration on many levels. My sibling who still lives there is a lineman with ATT and his wife is a teacher. They are barely getting by. They will get zero financial aid for their kids.