I am not sure Wesleyan is squeezing out the middle-class. Perhaps it is squeezing out the upper-middle-class though? I was fascinated with this tuition tracker yesterday (not sure how accurate it is), but it seems like Wesleyan still awards quite robust aid to students from families making under 110K, projected net price seems to be 16.5K (with a higher end estimate of 35K). According to the chart, Wesleyan also gives financial aid to at least some students from families making over 110K. Given 60% of the students receive no aid at all (as @Mwfan1921 points out), Wesleyan does have a lot of families paying the full cost of the tuition, but they do seem to give aid to middle-class families so I am not sure there really is a barbell. Instead, over the last decade, net price have dropped for families making under 110K while they have risen for families making over that amount.
If this tuition tracker is correct, I suppose the question is how many students receiving aid are actually in the 75K-110K range since the chart only reflect students who received at least some financial aid. Are there lots of other middle-class students that are not getting any aid at all? Or possibly lots of middle-class students who are admitted but ended up not being able to attend Wesleyan because the award package was not high enough. That explanation seems possible becuase I would imagine that 16-35K is still unaffordable to plenty of families in the income bracket highlighted below unless the parents take loans or have enough savings to cover 16-35K per year.
Schools are required to collect this information for federal reporting. The California schools still have the boxes on the forms but they havenât considered race for admissions for years.
I wouldnât characterize $120k family income as UMC in many high cost of living places. Didnât California just announce that was poverty level in SF?
That is fully in the control of the need aware institutions (like Wesleyan) who know exactly the level of need of every applicant they are thinking about accepting.
Obviously that is difficult for need blind institutionsâŠThey donât know if the need of someone from a target zip code (to take one example) is a full ride, or half ride, for example
Bingo. So much of the discussion regarding âthe barbell effectâ revolves around oneâs definition of middle-class. No doubt there are frequent posters on this forum whose âmilieuâ would be horrified at the prospect of subsisting off $75K a year which IIRC is the median income for a family of four in the United States.
Wesleyanâs CDS average level of need suggests there are very few students in the âmiddleâ in terms of degree of need. Maybe let us know where the data from tuition tracker is coming from (2023-24 data from the colleges is not available anywhere right now). If it comes from IPEDS, that data does not tell us how many students are in each income. bucket. There isnât a resource for that, but the averages in the CDS can tell a lot.
Not horrified at all at average income but does anyone really think most families with $120k income can pay Wesleyanâs $87k annual COA? Given its location it draws mostly from expensive East coast cities. Pretty clear barbell in my opinion. Lots of rich kids and some kids on almost full rides. Not much in between.
Iâd be surprised if families making $120k are paying $87k to attend Wesleyan. I canât speak to Wesleyan specifically but Iâve got some friends whose kids are attending elite privates (not Ivy) and theyâve gotten aid that has brought the cost of attendance to not much more than our state flagship (mid/high $30s) - they make more than $120k. Families who are getting absolutely nothing are often making more than $200k.
Families with $120k in income (and typical assets) would get considerable need based aid from Wesleyan, not sure at what level of income need based aid stops at WesleyanâŠbut one could figure that out using the NPC.
Regardless, I agree it seems Wesleyan does have a barbell in terms of level of family need, and thatâs exactly how they have chosen to build their class.
What does it matter? Someone is being squeezed out. Is that right? And I am not talking about people who are squeezed because they have a beach house and two BMWs. Itâs impossible to define income level without considering cost of living. Middle-class is not one size fit all.
That is based on the 2/3 to 2 times the median income measure.
However, the top end of the range of the place with the highest range listed there is still lower than the âno college financial aid anywhereâ range that some posters self describe as âmiddle classâ.
For the DC area, $221k; for the Bay area, $232k still qualified as middle class. Unlikely to get aid with those incomes, almost anywhere, including Wesleyan.
Right, but if the kids getting âalmost full ridesâ can have incomes of 110K (at least according to that tracker) then it seems unlikely that families making 120K are full pay. It seems to me that the question is how many middle-income families are at Wesleyan not whether or not those families get robust financial aid. Also, Iâm assuming that for at least some of those families, they are funding the remaining tuition out of money that they have already saved in 529 plans etc, which presumably is earmarked for the kidsâ education. So if a family makes 120K and is expected to pay 35K per year but they have say 100K in savings earmarked for college, I imagine that Wesleyan is actually doable, with some stretch and perhaps some loans. Nobody promised that paying tuition wonât hurt or require lifestyle sacrifices for those four years.
Obviously this is all speculation, and I donât really know, but I think any âbarbellâ effect probably comes from the total number of enrolled students from each quintile, but the presence of lots of ânearly full rideâ kids does not necessarily mean those kids are low income. Clearly some of the kids the nearly full ride are middle-class even according to the ranges listed for northeastern high cost of living areas. In the article that you linked, DC is the most jaw-dropping eastern region, and even most of that range would get substantial aid from Wesleyan.
In the New York/Newark/Jersey City, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania metro area, families making between $56,000 and $169,000 are considered middle class.
In the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland-West Virginia metro area, families making between $74,000 and $221,000 are middle-income.
For the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware-Maryland metro region, it ranges from $53,000 to $160,000.
For the Boston, Cambridge and Newton, Massachusetts and New Hampshire metro region, the range is $67,000 to $202,000.
Yes, Iâm guessing that you are absolutely right about that though (again speculation). Still I just doubt that the majority of the students getting financial aid are what some people imagine when they call it a barbell --that is lots of desperately poor kids and one end and lots of crazy rich people at the other end. At least in my experience, (admittedly I only have one kid in college so far, but all of my kids have attended private K-12 schools at one point or another), there are lots of crazy rich people at those institutions (one end of the barbell). But at the other end of the barbell, the typical family getting financial aid at elite institutions is more likely to have a lower middle-class household income than to be living below the federal poverty line.
DATA & METHODOLOGY:
Tuition Tracker is powered by U.S. Department of Education data from IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, a service provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. The institutions analyzed are all U.S.-based, degree-granting colleges and universities that have first-time, full-time undergraduates.
Prices are for first-time, first-year students. The projected prices for each institution were calculated by taking the compound annual growth rate over the period of 2011-12 to 2021-22* using raw IPEDS data, then projecting that rate from the 2021-22 sticker price to the 2023-24 academic year. Institutions without consecutive years of data going back to 2011-12 will not have projected prices. Average net price paid is determined by applying the discount rate for each income level in the last historical year these data were available.
I figured they were using IPEDS (thanks for posting the methodology). IPEDS doesnât show us how many students, if any, are in each income bucket.
I look at the barbell as those who need no aid vs those who need close to full aid (regardless their incomes, and at the more generous schools people who are technically middle class can receive large need based aid awards).
I think the group that is getting shut out are families making in the high $200s+. Often those families are living in high COLA and canât afford the full freight at a place like Wesleyan although they are considered full pay. I have a bunch of friends in that boat.
Got it. That makes sense given the 60% and 40% figures with most of the 40% receiving large institutional awards as you noted in an earlier posts.
I was thinking about it another way. I was thinking about the term barbell as reflecting whether or not certain income levels qualified for aid from a university. Iâve just read a lot of posters other threads who believe that middle-class and upper middle class are automatically ineligible for need-based aid at expensive colleges because all the aid money is going to poor families. It was that idea that I was pushing back against, which I now see is different than what you are saying. Semi-related question, are families that are worried about being shut out from aid because they are part of a donut-hole (a term that I also see on CC) different from those worried about being shut out because a barbell effect? Or is it just a different way of describing the same concern?
I agreeâŠthatâs a really important point that many families who are starting the college search donât understand. Thatâs why they have to run the NPCs!!
I understand that some think itâs a flaw that none of the FA methodologies take into account that some families might live in high cost of living areas. But, the government and generous schools generally seem to want to get FA to the neediest of families.
Seems the same to me, but maybe I am missing something? There are many people living in high COL areas like thorsmom said above who may not qualify for much need, if anyâŠwho canât afford (or donât want to pay) what a school might calculate as their contribution.
