<p>I wish these lists would rank FAMILY debt rather than student debt. I think colleges only appear to be good deals by leaving the students with low debt, while actually socking it to the parents for their portion of the tuition.</p>
<p>People have to realize that when it comes to schools like NYU, considering the number of students the school accepts, they will inevitably not have enough financial aid to go around for everyone who needs it. It sometimes isn’t the school’s fault. The size of the incoming freshman class makes it hard for the University to cater to everyone’s financial needs. After all, NYU’s endowment isn’t Harvard’s.</p>
<p>Unfortunatyely, NYU is in the real estate business as well a the research business and I think they could do a better job of meeting need rather than rewarding a large amount of top tier students and leaving the rest in a financial hole.
They are tuition driven and accept way more people than they should and put them in a program called LSP. IMO, it is a way to capture more money.
As I read somewhere here on CC, they run more like a corporaton rather than a school.</p>
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<p>While I understand what you’re saying and it makes total sense, I understand what colleges are doing here. College is a student’s responsibility, so it’s a student’s responsibility to take on the debt for his or her own education. That’s the underlying reason there. That said, yes, the financial aid system depends on (often large) parental contributions and loans for the parents if their out of pocket contribution is too much. To be honest, I had never heard of PARENTS taking out loans for college until I came onto CC. It is the parents’ choice to lay down an out of pocket contribution, but in my experience, it has ALWAYS been the student’s responsibility to take out the necessary loans.</p>
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<p>No. EFC means family contribution. The school says it is the families’s responsibility.</p>
<p>It is not that simple.</p>
<p>applicannot, that’s strange that you’d only ever heard of students taking out loans. I know that students often do take out loans, but I’ve also found that parents, who have more of a credit record, often end up taking out the bulk of them. That might just be my experience, though. Among people I know, the parents get debt from undergrad, and the students get debt from grad school, so it balances out in the end</p>
<p>at most of the schools we received a finaid package from, the
student loan package worked out to about $30,000 over 4 years.
the gap between cost and efc after the finaid package was anywhere
from $5,000 to $20,000 even at state schools. Assuming that much
of that gap is covered through parent plus loans or other parent loans,
the actual family debt load was above $50,000 at all schools. That
is usually not reflected in the college debt data. If that data was
available we would have a much more accurate representation of college
debt. As it is now many colleges look pretty good - gosh only $5,500
in loans! It’s pretty deceptive.</p>
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<p>Right… I know. I’m just saying this is my experience. Anyways, the expected family contribution is (should be) what the family can dole out of pocket, prior to loans. That’s the norm around here. anything above and beyond the expected family contribution is usually loans taken out by the students, at least in my area. I was just saying that was a strange concept to me.</p>
<p>Applicannot: If as you say, “college is a student’s responsibility” then that is all the more reason to rank how expensive colleges are based on the family’s portion rather than the (I think, artificially low) student’s portion. Put another way, when the family receives their FA package and it says:
Student owes A dollars
Parent owes B dollars
Total FAMILY responsibility is C dollars
(and according to you, that C dollar amount is actually the student’s responsibility), then the responsible student would be better served if they had a cost ranking list based on C rather than A.</p>
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<p>Okay? I had just never heard of it before. It’s perfectly reasonable for it to be different elsewhere. I was just saying that prior to CC, I had never heard of loans being the parent’s responsibility. Parent’s may have a responsibility to contribute, but that - as it is defined where I live and at least, at my high schools - is a monetary contribution, not a loan contribution. I’m fine if it’s thought of differently elsewhere or by schools. But given the way college is dealt with where I live, that’s just really strange to me.</p>
<p>I think we might be making two different points. Sorry. As far as who is legally responsible for a loan, I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve always assumed it’s whoever signs and co-signs the loan.</p>
<p>Back in the last century when I was in college and grad school, I never heard of parents taking out loans for their kids’ college educations. If the family couldn’t pay what the college(s) determined to be their fair share out of pocket, the kids went to cheaper schools. So, the situation was more or less the way applicannot describes. I graduated with a bunch of debt, but my folks didn’t owe a nickel.</p>
<p>Sometime between then and now things have changed, at least for some people. Maybe it was the invention of the Parent Plus loans, maybe it was the successful nation-wide marketing of what had previously been regional colleges and universities, maybe it was the rising expectations of the middle class. Whatever the contributing causes, nowadays many parents feel that it is reasonable (and probably in some circles it is almost expected) to borrow part of the cost of a college education.</p>
<p>Each of us has to look at our own family’s financial situation and determine what will work for us.</p>
<p>for a lot of parents, if you don’t do the plus loans, the only option
is the local community college.</p>
<p>is a joke! Everyone that I know that has gone to this school either did not graduate or transferred. I had a work colleague tell me that he owes 32,000 for a degree in screenwriting! Screenwriting?! He could have gone to Georgia State and paid a fraction of the cost in loans if -that- were even necessary!</p>
<p>To me, USNWR’s is somewhat flawed for they have listed WPI (MA) as a “Great Schools, Great Prices” under National Universities. </p>
<p>However, WPI is also listed under “Most Debt, Class of 2007” under National Universities with $37,784 for the average debt the students graduated with. </p>
<p>So, WPI is really not a “Great Price” they aren’t meeting enough need with grant $, they are just meeting need with loans. I don’t think that WPI really belongs under the “Great Schools Great Prices”. These two categories that WPI falls into are contradictions!</p>
<p>As a parent who had not been part of the process until a few years ago I was surprised by some of the interesting ways that information is interpreted and disseminated. I think the “average debt” and “expected family contribution” are among the most deceptive. </p>
<p>What should be reported is net cost of attendance “Cost - grants and scholarships= net cost of attendance”. </p>
<p>All that shows up on these reports is students debt (often capped at $5,500 a year) for undergrads at regular colleges (and a little more for adult and 5th year students).</p>
<p>(for example only)
Real costs might be more like - Costs $42,500 - grants and scholarships $11,500 = net cost of attendance $31,000 (total unmet need per year). However what gets reported now is only the $5,500 in loans (per year) that the student qualifies for. The other $25,500 per year doesn’t show up. How crazy is this…</p>
<p>The EFC is a total joke for the middle class. We don’t have 30% of our gross income to spend on a child’s education without taking on major loans. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the answer is but it should start with fair and accurate reporting.</p>
<p>My favorite joke term is “need blind.” </p>
<p>The kids seem think that means that the school will provide grant and Scholarship aid beyond EFC. </p>
<p>What it really means is that schools will offer you admission even if you don’t have a chance in hades to pay for it. And they would be happy to hand you over to a preferred lender for the rest.</p>
<p>Yes and while were talking about “need blind” - how about schools that say they “meet full need” above EFC (that is a silly figure to start with) but then the schools forget to mention that they “recalculate EFC based on an institutional methodology”. How is this different from we will charge you what we want…</p>
<p>I think most colleges work very hard to try and provide a good education at a “fair ???” price and perhaps the system is as unfair to good schools as it is to the students and their families. However deception is rampant and built into todays system. I think most people who have not been involved in the system recently would be shocked and outraged.</p>
<p>It is rather sad, I calculated the other day if I should earn more money, I would get to keep 20 cents out of every additional dollar I make! No thanks, the colleges, the FICA, the federal income taxes take it out of my hands!</p>
<p>I have to take out $31,000 in loans to attend Purdue University, PER YEAR. Meaning I will have 124,000 dollars of debt when I get out of undergrad. Perfect. The tuition is 38,590 and they only gave me 7,000 dollars. I live with my mom, she makes less than 35,000 a year, and I have a gpa of 3.7</p>
<p>I have no idea why the hell they did this to me, but yeah. My debt is serious.</p>