<p>
</p>
<p>You can niffle and gripe for a (short) while, and then grow up. You get your act together and resolve to do the very best you can at the school you attend. </p>
<p>What’s the problem? It’s your education and your life – do the best you can with the hand you are dealt.</p>
<p>OP, </p>
<p>What are you willing to do to make your college dreams come true? I worked 20 hours a week during my senior year in high school, 60 hours a week the summer after high school, and up to 30 hours a week during the school year, worked summers, and took out loans to attend my Ivy.</p>
<p>It was my dream, and I never regretted doing those things to attain it even though many of my friends didn’t have to work or take out loans to pay for their college educations.</p>
<p>My son who’s in a private LAC college has taken out loans, worked during summer and is working during the school year to attend his dream school. H and I also are taking out loans to help him.</p>
<p>We are, incidentally, a middle class black family – the type of people you appear to think get the world handed to us.</p>
<p>So – what are you willing to do beside study to support your dream?</p>
<p>It amazes me how many of you cannot see Tomdadon’s point…very sad state of affairs that now exists in this country…your all transactional not seeing the bigger picture of how this all leads to nothing but class warfare. </p>
<p>My solution? No one should receive free government aid. No handouts!!!..if you are poor you take loans just like the middle class family has to also. The government should make these loans available instead of handing out free money. Then you have a level playing field. As far as envying the rich and the fact that they can pay for it. Let’s make their kids take loans also. In other words the education is the responsibility of the student not the family. Then lets see how colleges would deal with this all. Recently the head coach of Ohio state said that the sports program brings in $68 million a year to the university so therefore this explains why a coach makes over a $1,000,000 a year. What? are we talking about college or a fortune 500 business. Amazing how the lines get blurred huh?</p>
<p>I have watched now for 30 years families save like pack rats and at the end of 4 years their net worth is less than their relatives who got a divorce, or had three kids from three different fathers or kids that were abandoned by parents ,in all cases their net worth was higher at the end of four years of college. Who empowered so many people to avoid responsibility for their offspring? The key is net worth, not income. Why?</p>
<p>When that student graduates after getting a free ride or grants etc they hit the ground running. The middle class family hits the ground carrying an enormous weight around their neck. How anyone can see this as being fair and logical is beyond me!!! They rationalize their position. It is class warfare and nothing else…and something that will be the ruination of our country along with many other policies that are stealing from one class to give to another. Bleccccccccccccccccch!</p>
<p>That is a good point.</p>
<p>"I have watched now for 30 years families save like pack rats and at the end of 4 years their net worth is less than their relatives who got a divorce, or had three kids from three different fathers or kids that were abandoned by parents ,in all cases their net worth was higher at the end of four years of college. Who empowered so many people to avoid responsibility for their offspring? The key is net worth, not income. Why?</p>
<p>When that student graduates after getting a free ride or grants etc they hit the ground running."</p>
<p>Your experience has been very different than what I’ve seen. I used to teach at a 2nd tier public that gave lots of merit aid to students with great scores and great gpas. What that meant was that middle class and affluent students – the ones whose parents could afford to send them to private schools or to live in areas with excellent school districts – got excellent merit aid and graduated debt free.</p>
<p>The poor students – the ones who were being raised by ill, poor grandparents, the students who were having to send money home to help their impoverished nuclear families – got minimal need-based aid, and graduated with tens of thousands of dollars in loans. A decade after graduating, they are still struggling to pay off that debt. Meanwhile, the students from middle and upper class homes are able to live comfortably. They hit the ground running, including getting parental help with buying homes and cars, and with moving to whatever city where they were able to find a job.</p>
<p>If one is middle or upper class, one can find a college that one easily can afford to go to. That may mean starting at community college and commuting. However, the community college starts that middle class and upper class students turn up their noses at are a financial sacrifice for poor students to attend.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, if a middle class/upper class student is reasonably bright and has gotten decent grades, they probably can find a private college that would give them some kind of merit aid, and possibly need-based aid (depending on their income). They have far more options than do poor students particularly since there are relatively few colleges in the country that guarantee to meet 100% of students’ demonstrated financial need, and such colleges are far more competitive than are most of the many colleges that don’t meet financial need.</p>
<p>northstarmom, thank you for saying that. Sometimes this board gets old,
especially the often held idea that poor people are getting free rides at
colleges. It’s the 1 in a thousand or ten thousand brilliant poor kid who gets
a free ride and yet poster after poster on this board vents and spews about
how unfair it is. Most poor kids and many working class kids don’t get the
opportunity to go to college, the vast majority of the ones who do go are
at community colleges or local low level states. Most are commuting to school,
working countless hours and graduating with huge debt. Yet, here on CC we
still have poster after poster who think poor people have some sort of advantage.
They turn the real world on its head. It gets frustrating sometimes</p>
<p>Now there’s a great idea Songman, why not saddle all kids with crippling debt before they’re 20?</p>
<p>Let’s just say that affirmative action works both ways.</p>
<p>Let’s just say, for example, that if admissions committees obscured race/gender during their review periods that most admitted students would be men of South or Southeast Asian descent. Let’s just say that students are held back because of their race to allow room for those “deemed white” to be admitted and matriculate into universities.</p>
<p>Let’s just stop saying.</p>
<p>lmaoooooooo^.</p>
<p>Ok I am not able to convince you- let’s look at a different example.</p>
<p>Do any of you pay taxes? if so then THANK YOU!!! Because this past tax year 2008 all of contributed $6,650 to my wife and I. You ask in what way? By allowing us to deduct our mortgage interest and property taxes on our tax return you inadvertently contributed to our ability to own a home! You made an investment in us! Now while we benefit from the tax break I can still remove myself from this transaction and call it unfair!!! Why? </p>
<p>What about singles, or married or one parent families that rent? They receive no break at all. Singles and young people who need to save for their future or for a home pay the highest % on their income. They can barely muster up any deductions…yet our government seems to encourage the investment of our taxes and thus in the process helped my wife and I lower our housing costs. They are reimbursing one socio- economic class at the expense of another. While I benefit from this form of reimbursement ,I believe it is unfair and economically discriminates against others that do not own a home. And worse yet if my home goes up in value I benefit and the taxpayers are not reimbursed for their investment ! Unless I sell my house and it is valued over $500,000 and I had a capital gain, then finally the taxpayers get their money back.</p>
<p>Such is the argument for college aid. It reimburses one class of individuals at the expense of another. The theory is that the recipients of this aid will become tax paying citizens someday and their taxes will help the next generation of deserving students. This all sounds good in theory yet in the end the final result I have seen as a financial planner is that their net worth is reduced substantially in covering the next generation and the work of the ancestors evaporates in college loan payments or college expenses.</p>
<p>So removing the emotion and looking at the transaction by itself I ask: why should all of you make an investment in my home and why should I pay full tuition when others do not?</p>
<p>So we agree to disagree and continue to see different points of view on CC. This is what I like about CC most of all… :)</p>
<p>Perhaps you would be happier in Canada or another socialist country?</p>
<p>The fact that we have state schools including huge networks of community colleges, Pell Grants and other federal and state grants for the poor, work study and even Parent Plus loans with not great credit required, makes college feasible for just about all. What you are arguing here is that all colleges should be. That’s what makes no sense to me.</p>
<p>I do feel badly for some kids who have different circumstances making the college of their choice not possible. But that’s life and they will face this with consumer products of all sorts as they go through life.</p>
<p>In my own life I’ve had to make lots of choices like everyone else. I could have not worked and created a one bread winner home. Had I done that my kid’s would not have had all colleges open to them and I and they would have had to accept that had I made that choice. So we all gave up something in having me work long hours, and for that we get to give them choice while paying full price which in turn let’s others enjoy aid. We’re happy with this arrangement.</p>
<p>There are lots of families living in nice homes with nice cars out front who can only ‘afford’ community colleges. And lots with modest incomes, small homes and 20 year old car paying full freight at expense schools. It’s simply personal choices in these cases.</p>
<p>There are many with few choices because there is low income, no home and no car. Yet they can still attend college, thought most often not elite ones, and change the options of their future children. In most countries this is not the case and mobility is not possible.</p>
<p>Then we have the OP who has fine college choices but feels they are not good enough and it’s unfair someone isn’t giving him the money to go wherever he wants. His parent’s make enough to not qualify for aid which means they are at the top of American wage earners. And he comes from another country where he may well have cheap education choices.</p>
<p>And you, Songman, agree and suggest we should make all kids take big loans to go to the college of their choice. Why should it not be my choice to work hard to give my children educational advantages? To sacrifice to make my children’s lives better? That’s been my motivation and that of many for doing the things we do to make this Country economically strong.</p>
<p>And there are good reasons behind your mortgage tax deduction and Obama’s new tax break for first time buyers. It makes communities and the Country as a whole stronger when more people are home owners. It stimulates the economy as homeowners purchase furnishings, hire Joe the plumber and pay gardeners among other things. You should like this, it’s redistribution of wealth, a socialist mainstay. If families can’t buy homes, rich landlords make all the money.</p>
<p>Why should the rules for colleges be different than they are for anything else? You get to purchase what you can afford.</p>
<p>I am liberal on most issues, but I find it difficult to ignore the idea that America’s economy was founded on equality of opportunity, NOT equality of outcome.</p>
<p>With Affirmative Action and financial aid favoring the poor and disadvantaged minorities more and more, and with the rich always capable of paying (and the difference being especially noticeable now, when college prices are higher than ever), it seems like the white middle class is being shut out.</p>
<p>In previous posts I resorted to anecdotal evidence regarding Affirmative Action and people accused me of bitterness/racism/shifting blame. But: [Affirmative</a> action in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States]Affirmative”>Affirmative action in the United States - Wikipedia).
Affirmative Action is a fact. Scroll down a bit and look at the data those studies provided.</p>
<p>The idea behind Affirmative Action is an important one, but it is executed poorly. And it is especially apparent this year, when getting into college is harder than most imagined. Take Yale, for example. This year, its regular decision rate was 5.4%. But for minorities, it is close to double that. So if the average is 5.4%, and the rate for minorities is higher than the average, then we can deduce that the acceptance for whites is LOWER than 5.4%. LOWER THAN 5.4% TO GET INTO A COLLEGE!!!</p>
<p>Then, of the whites who do get in, the poor ones get aid and the rich ones can pay. What happens to the middle class ones who can’t justify taking on a $200,000 debt for an undergraduate education?</p>
<p>Middle income in America is about $50K. You could not possibly be middle class if you qualify for no aid.</p>
<p>If that’s what you call middle income America (and it’s certainly valid), then we are simply having an argument of semantics. Regardless of whether middle America is 50k or 150k, there EXISTS a class of people, a “deadzone” if you will, that has just enough money so as not to qualify for substantial need-based aid, but that at the same time falls short of being able to logically finance an elite education. Whether you call this deadzone class the middle class, the upper middle class, or even the upper class, is not the issue.</p>
<p>At $150K, whether you can afford an elite education is a matter of lifestyle choice. More importantly, at that income a state U education should be no sweat. Why should a person at this income level be entitled to attend any college they feel they can not afford? Where I come from, families that don’t choose to pay for $50K schools tell their kids and they apply to schools the family can afford.</p>
<p>But that’s exactly my point. Why should a $150k family not be able to afford an elite school while a $50k family can?</p>
<p>'tis the whining season here on cc.</p>
<p>Because the $50K family doesn’t have the option of lifestyle choices to afford it. You and your family have options. Your parent’s are much more likely to be able to take out some loans, pay some from income, dig into assets, work an extra job or two, borrow from equally affluent relatives or some combination and make it happen.</p>
<p>And let’s face it, this scenario is true at about 20 colleges in America where the $50K student can attend with ample aid. Wealthy schools get to decide who they give their money to. A few have enough to give to the upper middle class but most don’t and know they will be well taken care of at their state schools.</p>
<p>“Why should a $150k family not be able to afford an elite school while a $50k family can?”</p>
<p>Probably because the $150 k family didn’t manage its priorities in a way to afford an elite school. My family doesn’t qualify for financial aid though we don’t make $150 k a year. I don’t feel cheated because of this. I don’t feel envious of people who make $50 k and get full rides to top colleges. </p>
<p>My kid is working during the school year and summer and taking out loans as are my H and I so S can go to the expensive private school that he chose. What exactly are you and your parents willing to do to send you to the school of your dreams?</p>
<p>"With Affirmative Action and financial aid favoring the poor and disadvantaged minorities more and more, "</p>
<p>Actually, financial aid is favoring the middle class and wealthy more and more. Also, more colleges are considering financial need as part of admissions, and are rejecting students with high need.</p>
<p>“but I find it difficult to ignore the idea that America’s economy was founded on equality of opportunity, NOT equality of outcome.”</p>
<p>Actually, the economy was founded on equality of opportunity for some white men. Learn your history.</p>