<p>I’ve skimmed these posts, and I am not an expert. But, the one thing that is overlooked (re entitlement, whiners, privates can do what they want argument), is that there is government subsidization of higher education. Privates can do what they want—but they leverage off students who receive government grants and loans. The privates benefit from public tax money—and so, they owe the public taxpayer something. They owe the middle class taxpayer something. If privates want to “do whatever they want,” renounce all federal-backed loans/grants or associated aid. If the government stopped providing government-subsidized loans, college tuitions would fall—because there would be a much smaller demand for their product. Now, I agree the government should invest in education. I just hate to hear the argument that “Privates are privates—and they can spend their money however they wish.” Sure, just don’t expect taxpayer money to help out your students and their families. Our public tax dollars help these institutions maintain the status quo. Taxpayers have a right to put some strings on the public tax money used to benefit these institutions—like if you cost too much we won’t provide Pell grants and subsidized loans.</p>
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<p>It is wrong to suppose that a family with savings is “responsible” and a family without savings is “irresponsible”. Many families with assets or savings were born into them or inherited them. Many families without savings may have saved diligently but had the savings wiped out by health problems, family death, divorce, job loss, or any other number of calamities.</p>
<p>^sorry, forgive me for what sounded like a generalization. I wasn’t trying to imply that that was universal. But on the other side, in the situation where the responsible family did earn that stuff, building up savings time and time again after unfortunate incidents and the recession, and the the other one wasn’t unfortunate, but was just irresponsible and blew what they made on whatever they wanted, should the responsible family pay more? </p>
<p>It may not be the norm, but in this case, should it be that way? Regardless of matriculation. Just, should their price tag be higher?</p>
<p>rarely. What usually ends up happening is that the irresponsible family either borrows or sends their Kiddo to a less expensive option.</p>
<p>To those who say the private schools owe the public because they benefit from public funding, you are missing the big picture. </p>
<p>Private schools relieve the public of the burden of having to further subsidize the college education of the students who attend. If we did away with all private colleges tomorrow, the additional burden on the states to provide more colleges would be tremendous.</p>
<p>The tax breaks and minor federal subsidies given to private schools are a bargain compared to the costs of operating public schools.</p>
<p>Tipa, how would colleges go about determining whether a family with assets is responsible and whether a family without assets is irresponsible?</p>
<p>I’m not saying whether or not their’s a solution because I honestly have no idea. I’m being hypothetical and idealistic I’ll admit, I’m just asking whether it’s right or wrong?</p>
<p>It’s not right or wrong, Tipa. It is an imperfect system, and the imperfections grow larger the larger the cost of tuition. So what was once a minor annoyance is now a gaping hole. But, there’s not enough money to fix it.</p>
<p>You are not wrong in noticing that there is a segment of the middle class stuck in a situation where they make too much for aid but not enough to pay what they are expected to pay. This has become glaringly obvious since the recession and the fall in housing prices.</p>
<p>Many families were using their inflated home equity loans to pay for college. Now, they are borrowing other ways, or, and this is the case all over, sending their kids to the state flagships. This is displacing the lower middle SES and lower SES students…</p>
<p>But, it isn’t going to be worked out in this economy. Unfortunately, in the guns vs. butter argument, in our country, guns won.</p>
<p>That’s the real elephant in the room. We spend on guns not education.</p>
<p>As a “responsible” saver myself, I do feel punished for saving. But the rules were there when I started saving, and I chose to do it.</p>
<p>Here’s a graph I generated last year using the Harvard NPC. It shows parent contribution as a percentage of gross income. You can see why the upper middle class feels unable to handle the costs.</p>
<p><a href=“http://■■■■■■■.com/r/msyofn/6[/url]”>http://■■■■■■■.com/r/msyofn/6</a></p>
<p>I don’t understand why people feel “punished” if they save for their kid’s college and then have to use that money to actually pay for the kid’s college? Do you feel “punished” when you go to the grocery store and you have to pay $2.99 for a gallon of milk while the “irresponsible” woman with three illegitimate children in front of you uses her food stamps? Do you stand there and think “sheesh, the government is punishing me for working, I should get free food too”?</p>
<p>I’m just not getting this. Over and over it comes down to envy of the poor. How dumb is that?</p>
<p>BobWallace,
And this graph is generated for Harvard, which is one of the most generous schools.
A similar graph for schools such as Northwestern or Duke would show that the pick occurs earlier (is shifted to the left) and that the maximum percentage income going to college goes above 25%.</p>
<p>^^ @sylvan, hahaha, this totally reminds me of a time when I was shopping with my parents buying hamburger helper and cheap cereal, and the person in front of us was getting steak and shrimp, on food stamps. outside of the time when we raised cows, we ate steak like three times a year, if we were lucky. We’ve bought shrimp one time in my conscious life time. And we LOVE shrimp. lol</p>
<p>Point being, i have seen people get some nice stuff on food stamps that yes, I do wish I had lol, and i did think at that time when I was 12, knew their kids, and knew that their kids had more stuff than I did, i thought I was being punished, I just didn’t know what for.</p>
<p>Now I do :)</p>
<p>Sylvan, all savings are counted, not just savings “for college”. It has nothing to do with the poor, it’s about comparing to my next door neighbor who saves nothing and gets rewarded for it by financial aid. It’s about an aid formula that effectively “taxes” my savings (all savings, whether for college or not) at more than 50%.</p>
<p>Bob, thanks for the graph. At Harvard it looks like the people earning 250K are the ones entitled to complain they are paying full price and the largest percentage of their income. Of course this is only Harvard and as pointed out above many equally expensive private schools shift the graph left. So I guess those folks have it rougher. Your graph just has income. How do savings factor in? I thought savings were “taxed” at less than income so why would they be 50%</p>
<p>tipa981. I appreciate your impassioned arguments, but you keep blending anecdotal stories with generalized scenarios to come up with inequities. When things are identical they are identical. If you have a friend whose efc went from 20k to 32k because of assets then not only does his family have a decent middle class income, they have over 200k in extra assets. That is substantial. </p>
<p>As we both agree most schools don’t meet need. So this means the poor kid is not going to do well at most schools. The middle class kid is not going to do well at most schools. Only that rich kid is set. </p>
<p>You dismiss the filthy rich kid with he can get in anywhere and pay anything so he’s got no problems. From what I’ve seen on cc, no one thinks he is the filthy rich kid. Everyone is middle class or not that rich or makes a good income but has expenses. I’d love to have a few kids admit they are the filthy rich ones and will be attending their choice of HYPSM etc in the fall at full pay and life is good. Maybe they are too busy on their yachts to be on cc?</p>
<p>Hooks-- They come in many shapes, colors, and sizes. I’m totally eliminating them from the argument, because they are more relevant to admissions. Once you are admitted, kids with identical hooks will be eligible for identical awards at a given school, whether merit or need based. Again you can’t compare middle class kid with first gen hook, with rich kid with alumni dad, with poor kid musician. They all have different hooks and so it’s impossible to say the system isn’t fair because each of those kids got a different offer. </p>
<p>The idea that if you work really hard and are accepted somewhere you should be able to go for free. That is what you are saying when you create a kid who is middle class, gets into a meets full need ivy and can’t go because his parents can’t afford the efc. Again identical kids with identical finances accepted to this school will get very similar aid. It is sad, but not reasonable to expect that all kids will get full free rides to these highly desired colleges. It would have to be free full rides, because how we would draw the line on how much anyone should pay? Right now we base it on income and assets. That is the point of FAFSA and CSS profile. </p>
<p>Merit aid is just that. It goes to you whether you are rich or poor. It can be a tiny award all the way up to a full ride. Seems to me this is equal availability for rich kid, middle class kid and poor kid. In fact it benefits rich kid and middle class kid more than poor kid, just like need-based aid is the opposite. For example your middle class kid can’t pay his efc at prestigious need-based aid, no merit-aid school, but his parents can pay 10k. Add together 10k from parents, 5.5k in loans and 20k in merit scholarship from doesn’t-meet-full need but has merit-aid, fairly exclusive school and voila he is on his way. Poor kid can’t get anything from parents; so sorry he’s not going. And yes, I know great merit aid is competitive, but you created three really great hard working high stats kids who just have different family incomes so I think they will all be successful. It is no secret which schools give merit aid and which schools don’t. It is on each school’s web site. </p>
<p>If the Ivy League efc is undoable for your middle class kid, what about the state flagship school? Even the most expensive ones are mostly still under 30K and many are around 20K. That is definitely lower than the full cost of most privates. Well, now you’ve determined this unfortunate kid didn’t get any merit at his state school. How likely is this considering he had the stats to get into that meets-need school? I agree, merit aid at state’s schools is often not generous, but he should get something and 2k off a 20k tuition is 10%. Again something from parents, something from loans, something from merit, or need based it should be doable. Rich kid can go too. His parents will be paying for a spring break trip, as well as next summer abroad and buying him a car to drive to his unpaid internship the summer after that with all the money they didn’t spend on prestigious private.</p>
<p>Middle class kid still can’t afford the 10-25K for state flagship? What about commuting to the regional state school or local cc. This is where we start to break down, but he got into expensive school X he should be able to go…</p>
<p>As for your statement “Reality should be known ahead of time”, you are right on. That is what cc is for. There are lots of misconceptions about college admissions and paying for college. I hope you do your part by letting kids in the years behind you know that they need to use the college specific net price calculators to know what their family may have to pay. That they know they should apply to a variety of schools. That merit or need based aid may work better for them. That they need to work hard and have high stats or they may have very little choice where they are going.</p>
<p>It’s extremely naive to think that kids who get a lot of financial aid are raised by “irresponsible” parents.</p>
<p>Some of the hardest working parents I now are those whose spouses deserted them to raise kids with special needs, who never used a penny of public funds to raise their kids, and who even homeschooled kids who were not getting special needs met in school, raised kids through their own cancer treatment with no family help, etc. etc. There are also families who were never given the chance at an education and worked multiple jobs for many years to be able to get their kids to the point of just being accepted to top schools. Are those parents “irresponsible?” No, they worked harder on average than some of the people who live in upscale homes and who complain about lack of financial aid. I’m familiar with lifestyles at relatively opposite extremes of the scale, perhaps not the most extreme, but close. There are abuses in every system, but to assume that people who get a lot of financial aid are on welfare and food stamps and don’t bother to work is excessively naive. Besides, a great deal of a full scholarship is not federal aid but rather a private endowment given by choice for that reason for students who could not go to the school otherwise but that the school especially would like to study there. I have listened to many moms who have stayed home to raise kids but who could have worked a job like many mothers do, and who made a lot of money when they formerly did, insist they can’t afford $12K a year. They could make that easily just by working part time in their respective professions only when their kids are in school, but they refuse to. Who is irresponsible–the single parent who has fully supported her child and met his special needs personally or the married mom who hasn’t earned a penny in eighteen years and has no intention of working to pay for her child’s college education? The truth is, there is a system to make sure that as many accepted students as possible can attend, and we need to trust it. If we think we were misunderstood, we can write a letter to the financial aid office and explain truthfully what our special circumstance is. But, not wanting to work because we have kids in private school still might not be seen as a hardship. Nothing wrong with staying at home for your kids. It’s great for kids not to have to be latch key kids. We all know that. But, it’s a choice not required by survival needs in most cases and not available to many, many families. So, just be realistic. </p>
<p>I try to have empathy for everyone, but I would still recommend to families who insist that they cannot pay their EFC to ask themselves whether their assets, their free time, their indulgences are all more important than where their child goes to college. As for student loans, they are tough but a true option. If a kid is going to graduate and make $60-80K a year right out of the gate, they can pay off loans in a few years if they are smart about living expenses and drive an old car. Yes, an old car. If they are too proud, well, that’s their problem. They have to decide whether having a car and a nice new car is more important than their education. There are kids who will be out of the gate helping to support their original families or caring for very low income parents before long. Low income doesn’t mean low work, remember. It’s all part of an equation.</p>
<p>@woodswoman: Sorry for all the inadequacies and generalizations. I’ll admit I’m biased because this is what I’ve seen and I haven’t lived to seen how it all works and what the most accurate picture is, and due to that even though I have been arguing a lot on here, I know that my perspective is one of very limited experience and I’m probably not the most qualified to be making assessments on this matter. And I’ll definitely be trying to spread the information I’ve gotten. Me and my buddy went through this ignorant, and I definitely don’t want that to happen to other kids in my town/network.</p>
<p>@AlwaysNAdventure: I’m not sure if it was my post or not that gave you that impression, but If it was I am sorry. When mentioning responsibility, I was referring back to a post comparing two identically incomed kids, one whose parents saved and lived well within or below their means to prepare for the future compared to the other family who lived lavishly, not saving a penny and enjoying all of their disposable income. I also haven’t been trying to imply that low income means low work by any means. My little anecdote about food stamps earlier was more of something I remembered that made me laugh and mad. It was someone abusing the system. I’ve been their, we were on food stamps once, and have gone through rough times, and we were working hard then and now. I wasn’t trying to be negative toward this group even though I understand by my language. My point was just that it’s rough UNTIL and IF you get an ivy acceptance, and then, for the kid at least, it’s nice!</p>
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<p>That is true for my particular situation, not everyone’s. My kids are arranged such that I will have at least one in college for 10 consecutive years, so at 6% of savings per year that comes to more than 50%.</p>