You’re right, doschicos. My mistake. I forgot there are only like 50 schools in this country that are actually worth going to.
Correction: it’s only worth being accessible to certain people (meaning, should be available to the speaker and s/he should be able to pay whatever they want.)
Look, you will never, ever see me argue that higher ed in this country isn’t broken. It’s broken nearly beyond repair. But it’s broken for the poor. The well-off have options. Lots and lots and lots of options. The poor… most have community college and maybe a local directional. It’s one of the numerous reasons that upward mobility for the very poor is virtually non-existent for my generation and the one above me.
To OP’s original post. I have 3 kids so 12 years tuition. Does it really make sense as a country that half of my tuition dollars go abroad to make college affordable, or should my kids be happy with State U. I don’t begrudge anybody getting any aid and for whatever reason, but the system is broken when my options are State U or abroad because I have been fiscally prudent my entire life and think education is one of the most important gifts my wife an I can bequeath to our children.
People make fun of us for living in Florida . . . someone from my H’s company actually argued with me about how terrible Florida is for senior citizens, Medicare, all that. It’s God’s waiting room, etc. Well, people can have the Northeast for all I care (no offense to our NE CC people here) .
Is Florida perfect? Far from it. But we don’t charge $25K+ a year for in-state college tuition (looking at you Pennsylvania).
Our community college system is good too. We also have wonderful opportunities for dual enrollment in high school. I just wish there was more knowledge about it all. I try to tell people if they seem interested.
I really just don’t understand the snobbishness about state schools here on the East Coast. It exists, and it’s different from other areas of the country, that’s for sure. (I’m from the midwest and have lived on both coasts.)
I get the angst about the rising costs of tuition, I really do. But it’s not true that we have terrible state school options here. They may not be as good as some, there are still strong programs at Binghamton, Stony Brook, Rutgers, UConn. Stronger certainly than some of the private colleges people talk about on this board.
I think when comparing state schools, you have to compare apples to apples (flagship to flagship, for instance). State flagship costs in the some northern states are significantly more than in the south (Rutgers, Penn State, etc. vs. U of Fla.).
^^^If you were paying 23k property taxes for a “tiny fixer-upper”, we have a different idea of what tiny fixer uppers are, or you were in some fancy neighborhood I can’t even imagine. I also have a tiny fixer upper in the Northeast–20 minutes from Manhattan, as a matter of fact, and my property taxes are a third of that. Of course, my kids didn’t get the “elite” public school that comes from those kind of taxes, but they did okay anyway.
The taxes were $8K when we bought it. It was a very affordable area at the time. The addition of the mid town direct train caused the property taxes to skyrocket which happened in a lot of towns along the corridor. Lots of seniors on fixed income had to sell. You probably remember it if you are from Northern NJ. The schools were well regarded but not elite. We moved before the kids were old enough…so no benefit for us unfortunately. We managed to buy before the train but the anticipation caused prices to rise so little appreciation when we sold. Timing sometimes is everything :). Mostly wanted to post because many people don’t know how expensive even a middle class experience is in the Northeast. Its really hard to get ahead. We live on West Coast now and people are astounded when I tell them about our property taxes in NJ.
Here in Silicon Valley, if you pay $2,300,000 for a home today, then you pay roughly $23,000 (more in reality) for your property taxes. And in some cities, like Palo Alto for instance, $2,300,000 might, if you’re very lucky, find you a small lot with a house that needs to be demolished or completely renovated. And you get a very good school district.
So, just depends. I’m sure Manhattan (or much of NYC) is worse.
I reread the OP. This isn’t really frustration with students who need more financial aid; it’s frustration with the northeast’s college options. Here’s the way I remember this era, from a west coast middle class POV
For my area it was Pomona and USC.
Not my family. Not most of my high school friends. There were four or five of us who went to Stanford (some perhaps with aid, others paying full freight), and another 40-50 who went to Cal. Yes, a few went to Brown and Yale and Harvard, but many more went to UCLA. Some of this was because of the quality of the UC system, not to mention how it was an incredible bargain a generation or two ago…but for most of us, private schools were unaffordable.
This is indeed such a huge disconnect between the west and east coasts. For years I’d argue with friends outside of California who’d insist that the reputation and benefits of private schools made the cost worth paying. I’d counter with examples of how folks succeeded coming from far less expensive public schools. It was only when my own children started looking at colleges that I finally understood the difference in outlook.
But the landscape has changed in many ways.
Schools that once upon a time were regarded as “good schools” filled with “good students” now fight in a much heavier weight class. The students admitted to Pomona are no longer B+ high school students; USC is no longer a place for wealthy California students who can’t get into a UC. The population has grown, and the larger number of excellent high school students have to go somewhere.
Air transport has gotten cheaper. Ditto long distance communications.
State funding may not be as generous for public universities (ahem, California’s once-glorious master plan for higher education). Out of pocket costs go up. Combine that with tougher admissions and suddenly the formerly no-brainer decision of staying in-state is replaced by looking around to see who may offer a better deal.
Having a national or even international reputation is valued on all sides. Students and their parents love attending a school that offers geographic diversity. The school’s reputation improves (“it MUST be a great school; people come here from everywhere in the country, and from other countries!”) which drives more people to want to attend, which allows the school to pick ever-more-impressive students. Public schools get to collect non-resident fees to bolster their budgets (see (3) above).
The OP wrote about private schools that “colleges that had built themselves up using vast public subsidies … for multiple generations on a sort of assumed understanding that they existed to serve the Northeast kids, suddenly started taking much, much larger percentages of their students from outside the region. When they did that, they essentially “stole” all of our college seats out from under us like some nightmarish game of musical chairs.” That’s not just something impacting NE private school alums. I see CA kids going to SUNYs and OSU and Kansas because it’s more affordable…which of course displaces some NY and OH and KS kids, just like some CA kids are being displaced by students going to Cal and UCLA and UCSD who are paying $50-60k/year for the privilege.
Many NE families have been colonizing schools outside the NE for quite some time, because there wasn’t room for their “good students” to even be admitted. Indiana Bloomington was one of the early beneficiaries.
We can’t get the genie back in the bottle. The landscape we had 30+ years ago is gone. We want to find ways to give a larger number of students an affordable and educationally meaningful college education. Doubling the number of seats in the “good enough” private schools and eliminating tax advantages for donations to those schools isn’t going to be anywhere near enough to accommodate all of the folks in the OP’s situation.
Well, I live along the Midtown Direct, too. I still only pay less than 8000k–I know you think you’re talking about “less elite” but, still…
I won’t name my town, but a relative of mine owns a “fixer upper” in Montclair, taxes also less than 8K.
MY point is that people in the NE who think they’re costs are too high, are living in bubbles, even here. Most of us don’t have those kinds of taxes. We never made enough to pay the AMT. But we still managed to send our kids to good colleges.
It’s exactly because I live in the Northeast, and in fact Northeast NJ, that I have less sympathy for the UMC laments that arise from this area.
I think one thing that effects this discussion is that parents hear about a lower-income kid going to Harvard or Middlebury, or another such school on full financial aid and they assume it’s that way at every school. The vast majority of schools gap and that can make a residential college impossible for some families.
The second answer seems to be “Well tell them to work hard and earn merit scholarships then.” The problem is that merit scholarships only go to the top students and despite what one might think after spending time on the Lake Woebegone that is College Confidential many, many hardworking kids won’t get them. We tell kids on the ACT/SAT forums that raising their scores from a 24 to a 35 or a 1100 to a 1560 is just never going to happen yet people seem to think that if they just worked harder those same kids could somehow break into the top percentiles required for substantial merit money. I’m not willing to give up on those B students. There are some fantastic kids among them.
I grew up very, very poor. The kind of poor that would’ve gotten top aide at top schools (not that I had the grades or activites for such.) I mean literally, we worked at a flea market on weekends and I learned from a young age how to lie to bill collectors on the phone kind of poor. A 20 year old car that only sometimes worked and a house that had portions of its roof missing kind of poor. The no health care, no heat, no air kind of poor.
My kid grew up UMC up until his dad got laid off his senior year. I can assure you I wouldn’t trade his childhood for mine for any school experience.
Frustration with the cost of higher education is reasonable. Anger towards the “benefits” low income students get is not.
“Frustration with the cost of higher education is reasonable. Anger towards the “benefits” low income students get is not.”
Yes. Misplaced frustration and anger. It is somewhat of a zero sum game. Where would the $ come from to make it more affordable for UMC families? How about looking up the food chain instead of down. That’s the group that is increasingly reaping the benefits of policy changes and such. Don’t fall for the fear trap that those less well off are the source of your discomfort.
^IMO that’s what we really need, not lower priced private colleges but truly affordable 4 year publics. A kid of any income level shouldn’t be unable to attend their state flagship for financial reasons. It would mean more taxes, but hell I’d rather my tax money be spent to send kids to college than to buy another bomber to protect our oil interests in the Middle East.
It is not misplaced at all. These wonderful, generous not-for-profit colleges have been captured by a handful of bureaucrats who use their power to enrich themselves and fleece the American public.
But that’s part of @doschicos 's point. Admin salaries are “up the chain”. As an underpaid instructor, I’m all for that. But the post you’re quoting was about blaming poorer students, and why that is misplaced. So I guess you agree.
But did YOU consider other schools in the US? There is a list of ‘under $25k’ schools pinned on the financial aid forum and most of them don’t cost that much because they have scholarships or financial aid. Yep, you have to go to school in South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Florida, but there ARE schools available. Many have a very good program in theater or forestry or mining engineering or nursing, but you have to search for the one that’s right for you.
What’s wrong with State U, even if that is your only choice (which I don’t believe)? Why are you entitled to a private school education?
