Middlebury is awesome – a top-5 or -10 LAC according to most who care. It might not be as well known nationally to the masses as the Ivies or big-time sports schools, but LACs generally aren’t.
If there was ever a time when schools like Midd, Cornell and JHU were considered just “ok”… those who thought so were living on a different planet. Those are, and were, massively awesome schools with huge reps in their respective circles.
I’m sympathetic to the general notion of trade-offs, sacrifice, anti-snobbery and “life sucks” that people are sharing but I do love @Quietlylurking 's reference to “Holistic theater”. If you have a child who is an elite athlete in a sport that a selective private college cares about and who also has half-decent test scores, you will be amazed at the amount of “financial need” you will be found to have.
of course there are, but we were discussing primarily privates to this point. It’s all relative and just my opinion that 50% of your HHI shouldn’t go towards funding higher education of any cost–public or private. it’s a completely broken system that rewards the bottom and the top and crushes the middle–regardless of geographic location.
And those from Alabama or Arizona have to go the same distance to go to an elite private NE school. What do they do? They love the schools available to them. Like noname87, I started life near Boston and have lived in 8 states. People from NE don’t need to change their bank accounts, they need to change their attitudes. People in Wisconsin go to school IN Wisconsin. No one thinks of Whitewater or Milwaukee or Oshkosh as ‘lesser’ schools. They are schools, you study, you get a degree in nursing or engineering or teaching, and everyone cheers for the Badgers and the Packers. No one is concerned with rankings or SAT scores (they weren’t even required for state schools when I lived there, don’t know if they are now). People are happy with their choices, happy to be able to go to college for $15k (or less), don’t care that they can’t afford Middlebury. My sister actually went to Middlebury when we lived in Wisconsin. It cost $5k, which was 20% of our family’s gross income. After a year she transferred to Madison and was 100x happier. No one looked down on her decision to go to Middlebury (although most didn’t understand why anyone would go to school OOS if it wasn’t Harvard or Notre Dame), no one said a word about her transferring, except maybe ‘Welcome.’
If students in the fly over states want to go to private schools, they have to pay for them too. Colorado College, Carleton, Rice, Northwestern cost a lot too. If families can’t afford them, they go to CU, or Minnesota, or U of Texas. And they are happy and don’t think they’ve been forced into a lesser education. They may even pick the publics over the privates (I know I did).
This may be true at some schools, but I certainly wouldn’t apply it to all schools, or even to a class of schools. To be clear, I’m talking about preferential distribution of what is claimed to be need-based aid. I have no doubt that on the admissions side of things, preferential treatment is given to students that the school specifically wants for whatever reason (athletics, artistic, legacy, etc.).
Others have (rightly, IMO) taken on several of the assumptions in the original post, but I haven’t seen this one dealt with…
…and that’s a problem, because it is, quite simply, false.
The overall population has increased, yes, but the important population given the content of the original post, the population of graduating high school seniors, has been pretty much flat over time. (That is, there have been ups and downs with the trendline overall has been positive, but not with any sort of serious upslope at all—and it’s projected to completely flatten and most likely go negative over the next decade and a half.)
Second, given that the original post talked about the Northeast, I’d like to point out that the population of high school graduates has been undeniably flat for a good while and is currently several years into a steady decline for that region.
Finally, the number of seats at colleges has increased pretty seriously over the past couple decades. Now I’ll agree that most of these aren’t at colleges that most folks on College Confidential generally get all hot and bothered over, but a lot of them are quite good schools.
TL;DR: If you’re going to make data-based claims, it’s a good idea to check the data first.
It only crushes the middle when you have expectation of being too good for a particular school. Many of the less desirable/famous colleges have interesting niche programs. Is it university of Dayton that has material sciences? Coastal Carolina for marine biology? Hendrix College for future peace corps workers?
there is no way we can afford the $68,000 per year our daughter's school is costing us. We had to take out a second on our house.@ClassicRockerDad With all due respect, that IS affording it. Congratulations on being able to afford to do so.
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@ClassicRockerDad at first glance, sure it appears that way. They had the equity and FICO score/income to qualify. That is not the same as “affording” this new big debt.
We frequently see people qualifying for loans that they cannot afford.
There is often a feeling of desperation that parents feel in the spring when NONE of their kid’s acceptances are affordable…and they begin raiding 401ks, stop funding retirement, borrowing against their homes, taking out Plus or private loans.
Successfully qualifying is not the same as affording. That’s only what impulsive people might conclude.
You’re an engineer, you should know better.
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kepakemapa wrote:
CA has, or at least had, the best public universities in the country, but with “holistic” approach they became very difficult to get into for high achieving white non-hooked applicants.
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My half white, half Asian nieces and nephew would say that their ethnic group is hurt by this in Calif. They opted to identify as white to possibly help their apps. Their last name is Italian, so no clues there. Whites aren’t the majority in some of the more desirable UCs.
"The fact that in the current college system, you are expected to devote 47% of your income to fund college attendance is just silly in every sense of the word. "
@CroissantMiser: Only the middle-class/lower-middle-class, and poor would have to devote 47% of their income to college (if they don’t qualify for merit or a school with generous fin aid).
Nobody in the upper middle class has to spend 47% of income in order to send a kid to college.
I think people are forgetting that most American college students do NOT go away to college. That is a luxury for 99% of students.
Most commute to their local CC and/or state school.
More CCs need to be improved AND need to offer non-STEM bachelor degrees.
Lesson #1. Life is not fair. It also helps to have saved for college expenses. We started late, but put in enough money into 529s for both our kids. They also did their part by performing well in school so they could compete and get merit or other types of scholarships. My wife and I did scrimp and not spend money carelessly. We never missed what we didn’t have. It’s all about priorities. With two in college next year, it’ll be a tough hit on my income, but we will manage with the planning we did.
I think both @Quietlylurking and @ClassicRockerDad make some valid points.
It does seem that the private schools price out the ‘middle’, but while that is frustrating, I don’t agree with the characterization that it is a betrayal. It is similar to the housing market in a way. You may have grown up in an area and when it is time to buy a house you find prices have risen beyond your affordability. To me that’s economics. not betrayal. While I do wish the thresh hold for need was higher to embrace more of the middle, I think @ClassicRockerDad makes an excellent point about Sacrifice. Some of the full-pay people that sometimes are bemoaned here, are not billionaires, they are people who perhaps started a college fund when their kids was an infant, people who may have worked more hours/jobs than they really cared too, people who skimped on cars and vacations and homes, people who will put off retirement and work a few extra years, people who planned and budgeted and then budgeted some more, and some parents who take out loans on behalf of their kids. There is a difference between can’t pay and don’t want to sacrifice to pay (@quietlylurking - that comment is not meant for you)
In terms of the cost, it does seem ridiculously high, but a good portion of a college budget is payroll. Maybe if we didn’t expect a 9:1 student/faculty ratio and went to say a 15:1, costs could come down. But then you would likely have professors complaining about course load. No easy answers anywhere. There was a idea floating around during the campaign that said colleges withe endowments over 1 billion, should be required to use 25% of endowment income for financial aid or they would lose non-exempt status. Not sure if that really would expand the pool to the upper middle class priced out though
I can understand that you feel frustrated. But, it’s not that colleges are consuming public resources and giving students nothing in return. The resources they get are:
The fact that you can’t afford the college you went to, but your kid can still go to college, means you have been lucky. A lot of things were easier for the baby boomer generation to pay for than for generation X and later, due to a lot of complicated public policy decisions as well as just local, national, and global economic changes.
To start understanding the economics of college, I’d recommend the following:
http://nber.org/feldstein_lecture_2016/feldsteinlecture_2016.html
There is also an old Planet Money episode about college costs that is interesting.
To really appreciate your blessings versus kids who are trying to figure out how to pay for both college and food, read this:
http://wihopelab.com/publications/paying-the-price.html
The value of a college degree is not something that can be accurately priced. It has both tangible and nontangible value. The student’s future job market, general health, and other factors affecting the ability to earn back the costs are not easy to predict. And the value to the parent (who is losing income or assets to pay tuition) and to the student (who is gaining an education) are different as well.
The US News Rankings were the first step towards making the college market national rather than local. And by skewing demand, it really helped some colleges and hurt others. Now, there are things like the Net Price Calculators and College Scorecard that are helping families gaining some additional market information so they have a better idea of what they are getting into.
Upper middle class parents who start looking early will be able to find an affordable choice. As with home shopping, you may have to make trade offs between price, “features,” and location.
California publics do not use race or ethnicity in admissions.
White (non-Latino/Hispanic) students are not the majority of undergraduates in any UC, or any CSU other than CPSLO (and possibly CMA). But that is not too surprising since California’s high school graduates are under 27% white (non-Latino/Hispanic) these days.
We opened 529 plans when my kids were toddlers. I remember putting in $25 a month the first year. Trust me we knew that at that rate we wouldn’t get far but we increased it every year. It is all about priorities. College did not sneak up on us.
@mom2collegekids “Successfully qualifying is not the same as affording”
That is so true.
We are still paying off our own student loans and now we have a second mortgage. It was our choice, of course, no one forced us to take on the debt to send our daughter to an expensive private school (that does not offer any sort of merit aid).
I think that both merit aid and need-based aid have their place. My nephew was recently accepted five private schools and all met 100% of his financial need. I am thrilled for him and so happy he is able to afford to go to college.
“You can slice it however you want, but nobody will ever convince me that once HHI is over $140K that 1/2 of it should go towards funding a year of college…there’s no scenario in the world where that’s logical.”
I agree that the above is NOT logical. I can’t imagine our family ever considering spending 1/2 of our income to fund college for one child, or taking out a second mortgage for the same reason. That is our choice. Other families may make different choices. No one is forcing any family to put out that kind of money for college. We chose to set a limit for each child as to how much we would pay for college and we made it clear that financing colleges for our kids would in no way impact our retirement savings. Each kid knew upfront that they would have to work hard to earn merit awards if they wanted to attend a school that was outside of our budget. There are many more-affordable options to the “elite” $60,000+ schools, and many of those schools provide an excellent education.
We also see people who have no way to pay for college because they don’t qualify and can’t afford it. They don’t have the stats for full-need schools, or are international, or their parents simply won’t pay anything.
If you’re borrowing money to pay for private school, it’s a discretionary choice. It’s one that I more often think is worthwhile choice than @mom2collegekids does, but I admit it is a discretionary choice.
Because there are so many people in the first situation (can’t afford anything), I feel that the ability to be in the second situation is a blessing.
@Quietlylurking I feel your frustration. Eldest went to the UK loves every minute of it, youngest will probably follow. Look at Canada. As someone else said, the US college system is broken in so many ways.