How Colleges Are Pushing Out the Poor To Court the Rich 668
An anonymous reader writes "A change from 'need' based financial aid to a 'merit' based system coupled with a 'high tuition, high aid,' model is making it harder for poor students to afford college. According to The Atlantic: 'Sometimes, colleges (and states) really are just competing to outbid each other on star students. But there are also economic incentives at play, particularly for small, endowment-poor institutions. "After all," Burd writes, "it's more profitable for schools to provide four scholarships of $5,000 each to induce affluent students who will be able to pay the balance than it is to provide a single $20,000 grant to one low-income student." The study notes that, according to the Department of Education's most recent study, 19 percent of undergrads at four-year colleges received merit aid despite scoring under 700 on the SAT. Their only merit, in some cases, might well have been mom and dad's bank account.'"
guessing it's more complex than that (Score:5, Informative)
Re:guessing it's more complex than that (Score:4, Informative)
"These schools" are "from 15 large metropolitan areas. These areas often have highly regarded public high schools, such as in New York City or in the Washington, D.C., area." It's the 30% of low-income high-ability students outside those metro areas that aren't heading to elite universities. Harvard also claims [harvard.edu] that 20% of its class falls under the $65k/year threshold and therefore pays nothing.
fact check? (Score:5, Informative)
The study doesn't actually say that, at least not according to the chart on page 4 [ed.gov]. It says that 18.8% of the students in college who had scores of 0-699 got merit aid. Not that 18.8% of all the students in college received aid with such low scores.
Re:Goodbye (Score:5, Informative)
Fun question here... how is your nephew going to school, and where?
I've known folks who paid their own way through school, who got their Bachelors' 8 years after they started, but they paid their own way along, CLEP'd out of the drudge-work classes, used the GI Bill, used employer-sponsored tuition reimbursements, got their undergrad at the local (read: cheaper) community college but their BS at the state uni, etc.
There's the traditional (and IMHO stupid) way of doing college, and then there's the smart way to do it. Do it traditional, and (sadly) prepare for the consequences.
Re:living in america :( (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
and the massive financial cost upheavals induced by Obamacare
Funny, my company's plan actually got cheaper after a decade of increasing prices and increasing deductibles.
The only companies that were actually affected, really, were the ones that had more than 50 full time employees and didn't offer health insurance. Everyone under 50 is exempt, everyone over 50 who already offered insurance didn't need to do a damn thing except for the whole contraceptive flap.
Also, keep in mind that Obamacare doesn't even make the company pay for the health insurance as long as they contract a "cheap" (relative to the employee's salary) policy. Maybe the defense-contractor employee was making $15k/year? Or maybe his boss decided to cut expenses and pad his bonus while blaming Obamacare.
Prisons are highly profitable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Average public univ = $13,600 a year (Score:3, Informative)
A part time job and a summer job could put a pretty huge dent in $13,600 a year.
In the year 2013 during the worst economic times the US has seen in many decades:
1. Those jobs are very hard to come by. Just look at the unemployment rate for kids from 18-24. [policymic.com] Just saying that they need to get the gumption and get a job doesn't reflect the reality of what kids have to deal with today.
2. You wouldn't even make close enough to put a ding in those expenses let alone a dent.
3. Average what? Tuition? Books will take up Summer earnings and colleges love adding all these other fees.
4. Unless you're really sharp or majoring in Women's Studies, a part time job during school is a burden and makes it hard to keep grades up and ...
5. In this day and age, kids are competing with people from all over the World. A GPA less than 3.5/4.0 means you are going to have a hard time getting employed. Compared to back in my day, just graduating with a 3.0 meant you were golden.
7. With Globalization, the opportunities available to kids are declining rapidly. Back in my day, Big Corp had an entry level track for us State U. grads and the Fast Track for the Ivy League grads and groomed folks for the future. Today, they want folks who "can hit the ground running" and entry level means two years of experience.
8. There's no going back. This is just a symptom of the rest of the World catching up with the West and our inevitable regression to the mean, if you will, of standard of living. Meaning, there are only so many basic resources on this planet and we are all going to have to reduce out living standards - except for the super rich 1%'ers.
Re:guessing it's more complex than that (Score:5, Informative)
For fun, here's a list of top public universities and their in-state costs (from US News):
1. UC-Berkeley, $11,767
2. UCLA, $12,692
3. UVA, $12,006
4. Michigan, $13,437
5. UNC, $7,694
6. Wm. and Mary, $13,570
7. Georgia Tech, $10,098
8. UC-Davis, $13,877
9. UC-San Diego, $12,128
10. UC-Santa Barbara, $13,671
11. Wisconsin, $10,384
12. UC-Irvine, $14,090
13. Penn State, $16,444
14. Illinois, $14,428
15. UT-Austin, $9,792
16. Washington, $10,574
17. Florida, $5,656
18. Ohio State, $10,037
19. Maryland, $8,908
20. Pitt, $16,590
So which state's two major state universities are both $20k+?
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
Re:living in america :( (Score:5, Informative)
In reply to yourself and the AC above you, let me provide a decent snip of the conclusion of a rather detailed study from Berkley:
Full PDF link [berkeley.edu]
There are many theoretical reasons to expect that education reduces crime. By raising earnings, education raises the opportunity cost of crime and the cost of time spent in prison. Education may also make individuals less impatient or more risk averse, further reducing the propensity to commit crimes. To empirically explore the importance of the relationship between schooling and criminal participation, this paper uses three data sources: individual-level data from the Census on incarceration, state-level data on arrests from the Uniform Crime Reports, and self-report data on crime and incarceration from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
All three of these data sources produce similar conclusions: schooling significantly reduces crim- inal activity. This finding is robust to different identification strategies and measures of criminal activity. The estimated effect of schooling on imprisonment is consistent with its estimated effect on both arrests and self-reported crime. Both OLS and IV estimates produce similar conclusions about the quantitative impact of schooling on incarceration and arrest. The estimated impacts on incarceration and self-reports are unchanged even when rich measures of individual ability and family background are controlled for using NLSY data. Finally, we draw similar conclusions us- ing aggregated state-level UCR data as we do using individual-level data on incarceration and self-reported crime in the Census or NLSY.
Given the consistency of our findings, we conclude that the estimated effects of education on crime cannot be easily explained away by unobserved characteristics of criminals, unobserved state policies that affect both crime and schooling, or educational differences in the conditional probability of arrest and imprisonment given crime. Evidence from other studies regarding the elasticity of crime with respect to wage rates suggests that a significant part of the measured effect of education on crime can be attributed to the increase in wages associated with schooling. We further argue that the impact of education on crime implies that there are benefits to education not taken into account by individuals themselves, so the social return to schooling is larger than the private return. The estimated social externalities from reduced crime are sizeable. A 1% increase in the high school completion rate of all men ages 20-60 would save the United States as much as $1.4 billion per year in reduced costs from crime incurred by victims and society at large. Such externalities from education amount to $1,170-2,100 per additional high school graduate or 14-26% of the private return to schooling. It is diffcult to imagine a better reason to develop policies that prevent high school drop out.
Highlights are mine.
Re:Goodbye (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe his boss decided to cut expenses and pad his bonus while blaming Obamacare.
I see that all the time. Minimum wage goes up 10% and a company cuts jobs 50%, blaming minimum wage. Or the insurance was going up 20-30% per year from 1990 to 2010, and once Obama comes in, they change from one of the premium plan to a cheaper one, and blame Obama. I know my health insurance was cut the year before Obama, after having absorbed the cost previously, if they had lasted one more year, they could have blamed it all on Obama, and some more people would be ranting about evil Obama when he was unrelated to the issue, other than being a convenient scapegoat.
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
Governor Reagan did not end free education in California's universities. That was done after he was president, in 1982. He did allow increased student fees, and tried to end the tuition-free policy, but in no way "ended free education" since tuition was not instituted until 8 years after he left office.
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
"Ted Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the Senate, so when he died the then-governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, appointed a Republican to replace Kennedy and the Democrats lost their supermajority."
That's the complete opposite of what occurred. Governor Deval Patrick (a Democrat) appointed Paul Kirk (a Democrat) to fill Ted Kennedy's seat so they could get the required votes to pass the president's health care bill. He was eventually replaced by Scott Brown (a Republican) in the following special election.
Re:Goodbye (Score:5, Informative)
That leaves more than two thousand dollars per year. Now, one could realistically borrow this money, but who would lend it? I have a friend who was offered 13% interest. Fuck that bank.
Anyone can get $57,500 in student loans from Stafford loans. Since it cannot be discharged, you can get it even if you declared bankruptcy yesterday. The subsidized portion is 3.4% interest and the unsubsidized portion is 6.8% (not 13%). In this case you only have to make $10k per year; $8k if you spend your first two years in community college. Even if you do have to take out the full amount, your after college income only has to be about $6k/yr more to account for your $300k monthly college loan payment.
Re:living in america :( (Score:4, Informative)
I hear this statistic a lot as some kind of indictment of our education system, but if you think about it, it makes sense. People are expected to pay for or at least contribute to their (post-secondary) education because the purpose of that education is to benefit them, at least in the sense of given them a better chance at a higher paying job.
No, that's fucked up.
The purpose of education is to provide society with more productive members.
(Your comment epitomises one of the very worst problems with America and Americans, and one of the reasons that this American doesn't live there any longer--not only is it always All About Me And My Money, but it's automatically assumed that the rest of the world thinks this way, too.)
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
Still possible to work your way through school in NYS... source [suny.edu].
We may have some of the highest taxes in the country but things like this is what it goes towards. There's also the Tuition Assistance Program (additional financial aid) and things like the Education Opportunity Program for students of low income households.
It can be made even cheaper by living at home (subtract room and board cost). Hopefully home is near a city (not necessarily *the* city, there's SUNYs everywhere). If not, that's simply the tradeoff of living in the middle of nowhere.
If you're not living at home, the "keeping gas in the tank" argument disappears - who says you need a car? That's several thousand a year going to what, exactly? You're not living at home so no excuse - you can select your state school and residence based on public transit requirements. Minimum wage jobs tend to also line public transit corridors. Many state schools offer public transit discounts for the regions they are in (or even flat out free transit).
Basically, if you are a resident of NY and cannot afford to go to college, it's most likely your own fault - do some research and be willing to adjust your lifestyle habits. If your home state is a lot less helpful, well, that's your lower tax rate in action.
Re:Average public univ = $13,600 a year (Score:5, Informative)
I am in college now, and familiar with tuition costs. Right now, a Va resident can attend basically any college in Va for ~ 10k / year. Thats tuition, books MIGHT add another 1-2k, but you can generally rent books for $50/class x 4 classes x 2 semesters.
Yes, if you cant cover that, you dont have the gumption. Sorry.
And I love how the headline demonizes merit based aid. Oh the horrors.
Re:Average public univ = $13,600 a year (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Goodbye (Score:3, Informative)
What? That is a lie.
What was "stop loss"? (Score:5, Informative)
Lie? I remember hearing about something called "stop loss", where soldiers had to return to Iraq/Afghanistan even after their enlistment was up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-loss_policy [wikipedia.org]
--PM