Rice University Says Middle-Class And Low-Income Students Won't Have To Pay Tuition (npr.org) 250
Rice University is "dramatically expanding" its financial aid offerings, promising full scholarships to undergrads whose families have income under $130,000. NPR reports: The school says it wants to reduce student debt -- and make it easier for students from low-income families to attend. "Talent deserves opportunity," Rice President David Leebron said while announcing the plan on Tuesday. The full scholarships are earmarked for students whose families have income between $65,000 and $130,000. Below that level, the university will not only cover tuition but also provide grants to cover students' room and board, along with any other fees. Another part of the program will help students whose family income surpasses the maximum: If their family's income is between $130,000 and $200,000, they can still get grants covering at least half of their tuition.
How much have ya got? (Score:5, Interesting)
The trend lately is for colleges to set a ridiculously high price, then give "everyone" a discount. They're taking as much as they can from everyone. In what other field do companies get away with that? What a scam.
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Although in this case, IIRC, Rice has a big endowment, and tuition isn't very high anyway.
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per The Founder (Score:5, Informative)
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Reread TFS.
$65k income = free tuition plus grants to cover room, board, fees, etc.
$65k - $130k = free tuition
$130k - $200k = grants to cover at least half of tuition.
So they're expecting you to cough up $23k/year, plus living expenses. Maybe not such a good idea to live in the luxury on-campus dorms if you don't come from money though
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The entire medical system in the US.
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Medicine. I'm broke, barely getting by and on food stamps. I also have serious medical problems. The doctors want to charge (for example) $1000, but will likely settle for $100. The hospital is under great scrutiny right now. It is desperate to show how charitable it is. Because I'm on foo
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They're taking as much as they can from everyone.
They're taking what the market will bear - isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work?
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Have you ever tried ordering enterprise class hardware from HP, Cisco, Dell, EMC etc.?
Listprices sre ridiculous but just about anyone gets 40 tp 50 percent off. Depending on the size of your order, your account and whether you're close to the end of their quarter, you can manage 60 percent rebate or more.
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What, you have coverage? Oh, the charge will be $29.95, onto your deductible.
Loss leader? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Loss leader? (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if they found that they still make a nice profit on the room and board, etc.
They have a page breaking down the costs [rice.edu] of a Rice education. Roughly 72% of the cost is tuition, so it's safe to say that they're waiving their biggest money generator. They also have a page dedicated to discussing off-campus housing [rice.edu], on which they earn no profit at all (plus, Rice is in Houston, and as that page goes into detail about, Houston is one of the cheapest big cities to live in). So, no, I don't think they view room and board as a profit center. Universities like Rice typically operate on endowments and donations from alumni more than tuition payments.
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Rice feels guilty about it's $5.5 Billion dollar endowment, so it's come up with this scheme to help spend it down.
This program will quickly attract the best students, looking for a free ride for their undergraduate degree, so what does that mean for all the poor and minority students graduating from inferior schools? They will likely not have the grades to get into Rice.
Sometime in mid 2019 I expect a lawsuit alleging the Rice plan is racist.
Oh, and let's not forget, if your family has "unusual" assets (ow
Socialism argument aside.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they can afford this and keep the lights on, it really shows how much we are all overpaying for higher education.
Read TFA (Score:2)
I'm happy they're going to give out scholarships but I want to see more being done for public Universities. In 2018 college should be tuition free. For one thing given productivity raises and automation we could use less people in
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Unlikely. You cannot fix human greed. The mortgage market expanded wildly on sub-prime mortgages because everyone was seeking more and more money, and conjuring up mathematical models that say everything is OK. (These are really smart people, too). And as long as everyone was making money, everyone was happy to look the other way.
That said, not everyone suffe
Why did tuition raise? (Score:5, Interesting)
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That seems strange to me.
When you have three kids; even in a low-cost-of-living area... it's a tight income.
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I wont berate you for it. Just stop expecting me to help pay for them and stop telling me to forgo small luxuries because they damage the planet that I wont be around to need.
If everybody in my country turned barren tomorrow I'd be just fine with that.
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Did you miss the part where they included the middle class?
$130k is upper middle class, though the precise bounds are rather poorly defined. Pew Research defines middle class as people making between 2/3s to double the median U.S. income, which gives a range of about $42k to $135k
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$130k is upper middle class, though the precise bounds are rather poorly defined.
Are you sure? What if someone makes $130k one year, but netted -$100k the previous year due to medical expenses, and all the money essentially has to go to pay debt?
Maybe they are permanently disabled and the $130k in income came from a one-time sale of property.
Income does not directly materialize into a class or way of living ---- Although $130k or more a year average maintained for 10 years is probably upper
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Absolutely, there are *always* exceptions to any rule. But as a general rule most people's incomes don't change much from year to year. Assets might make a better guideline, but given the skill of the wealthy in hiding assets, and the fact that there's no accepted authority for measuring them (unlike the IRS for income), it can be difficult to gauge accurately.
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True, but wealth is a lot harder to measure accurately, and estimates paint such a bleak picture that nobody but the rich wants to look at it - and they'd just as soon the rest of us avoided looking as well.
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Re:The long fall to Socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
As the US continues it's long fall towards Socialism, I am saddened by the low information populace who think that this will be a panacea.
Let me try to help you out:
Rice University [wikipedia.org]: William Marsh Rice University, commonly known as Rice University, is a private research university ... (emphasis added)
As someone who is strongly committed to both free market principles and also smaller government I think this is utterly fantastic. It doesn't get better than this. It is the polar opposite of Socialism.
The university, a private entity, has made a public financial commitment that better serves its own interests and the public good. Why hate on that? I mean, seriously, I would much rather see this sort of thing than more government handouts. Those handouts require the government to use the police power of state to confiscate private property (the money each taxpayer earns) and then use a corrupt and inefficient system to dole it back out. In fact, federal education spending is probably the most wasteful spending on the part of the federal government. The university doing this for themselves means that they have a vested interest in efficiently applying the funds in question and in producing the best outcomes (successful alumni who improve the school's reputation and donate back to the school).
Sorry, but you are way off base and this should be the way that education gets fixed in this country: by the schools, not by the government.
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We shouldn't need a lot of government programs if private donors stepped up to the plate. Government should only be a stop gap.
And yet, I've acdtually had people tell me that I was stupid to give money to charities and then later are heard to be bitching about government shouldn't be doing this either.
If someone hates government giving away any money then they should put their money where their mouth is and try to take up the slack.
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If you are twenty and a Conservative, you have no heart.
If you are forty and a Liberal, you have no brain.
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Just ask any of them how smart they are...fucking morons.
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You don't need to worry about how someone else gets to college. If you can put your kid through it with no problems, great! Spend what little time you have trying to make things better, not worrying about how someone may or may not be "freeloading" into an education that, quite frankly, everyone deserves.
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"'deserve' is used when a person should rightly receive something good or bad because of his or her actions or character." (Merriam Webster)
It may be best if everyone gets an education, but not everyone deserves an education.
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What does that have to do with ownership of the means of production?
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Rice is a private university. This is not socialism as the government is not involved in any way. If you feel strongly about this, then feel free to pay full price for tuition yourself rather than bitch about a great opportunity for others.
Re:The long fall to Socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
If your family is pulling in $130,000 and you can't afford an education then the problem's in the Universities.
Maybe those $100 million sports facilities and plasma TVs in every bedroom aren't really needed.
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My spouse went to Rice. The dorm was a pretty basic cinder block affair and the sports facility wasn't extravagant. The grounds and classroom were quite nice, however.
Plasma TVs are obsolete and it's pretty much impossible to find any TV that isn't flat. You can get them at Walmart for $100. Seems like an anachronistic comment.
ignorance is bliss (Score:2)
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Except that's one way to prevent too many people from attending the same university.
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Apart from that, college athletic departments "lose" money the same as other departments.
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:5, Informative)
Germany has had such a system for decades, and is the power house of Europe.
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One semester of bad grades, and out the door German college students go.
German 'poors' are routed into apprenticeships, same as their parents were.
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:2)
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
One semester of bad grades, and out the door German college students go.
That seems like a good incentive for students to do their best.
German 'poors' are routed into apprenticeships, same as their parents were.
No, German 'dumbs' are routed into apprenticeships. It is based on aptitude, not income.
And there is nothing wrong with apprenticeships. They are a good option for people that are not academically gifted.
I went to college and did an apprenticeship in metal working. Knowing how to use a metal lathe and CNC mill turned out to be very useful life skills.
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:2, Insightful)
Very good fucking point my friend!!
I cooked for 10 years. In good restaurants, some the best or busiest in their town. One might call me an apprentice chef, well not anymore, but then.
Too bad those 10 years of apprenticing got me nowhere! All I know how to do is cook very good healthy fresh food for a lot of people and also bake bread and do so with health and vigor and flavor and community in mind!
Woe is me, however will I apply all of these completely useless skills that I learned outside of coll
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Intelligence is inheritable. Duh. Like I said, 'same as their parents'.
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Intelligence is inheritable.
So is height. But that doesn't mean short people never have tall kids.
Heredity is complex, and dumb (and poor) parents can have bright kids, and smart parents can have dumb kids.
The German system certainly has flaws, but discrimination on income is not one of them. A bright poor kid can go to a gymnasium (4 year college) tuition free.
For kids that don't do well academically, it is foolish to try to push them into an educational track that will lead to failure and waste. Apprenticeships are a very good al
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, intelligence and wealth don't correlate very well. Plenty of stupid-to-mediocre people have become rich (most athletes and actors spring to mind), and plenty of brilliant ones "waste" their life in intellectual pursuits rather than accumulating wealth.
Also, the genetics of intelligence are not so simple. There's plenty of brilliant kids born to mediocre parents, and plenty of mediocre kids born to brilliant parents. Society is best served if the poor, smart ones are able to develop their intelligence into valuable skills, rather than pursuing whatever dead-end stream of jobs keeps food in their belly. Of course, that means added competition for the stupid rich kids, so the wealthy are often opposed to the idea.
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It gets even more complicated. Nutrition during development in childhood has a pretty significant effect on cognitive ability, so even if you win the genetic lottery, you can still lose if you're born in to extreme poverty where caloric and nutritional intake is too low during developmental years. There's a lot of research to back that up, indicating that while cognition certainly has a genetic component, like all complex traits, there are significant environmental components as well; nutrition, exposure to
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Nutrition during development in childhood has a pretty significant effect on cognitive ability
Indeed. Breastfed children average 3 IQ points higher than average.
Even more important is prenatal nutrition.
Good nutrition is not cheap, but bad nutrition is really expensive: Prison inmates have an average IQ of 87, and 3 times the average blood lead levels. Keeping one inmate locked up costs $30k/year. With 2.2M inmates in America, that comes to over $60B per year. Better prenatal and childhood nutrition could cut that in half.
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>Better prenatal and childhood nutrition could cut that in half.
Don't be ridiculous - it'd just mean we had to increase the number of laws and severity of punishment to keep up the quotas. We're not the number one nation for incarceration (by far) because our population is significantly more violent or immoral than most. /sarcasm /sort of
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Intelligence is inheritable. Duh. Like I said, 'same as their parents'.
While true - it also means absolutely nothing.
In my family, My father, my older sister, and myself have very high intelligence. My mother and my younger sister both have average intelligence. My father was fairly poor, and my older sister worked a life full of menial jobs, despite her IQ and degree. On the other hand, I am pretty driven, and I have done well.
Silly things like "The Bell Curve" are stupid - as are the people who believe in it. Even if true, it tells not one thing about any individual.
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:2)
Education tracks and trade school seem efficient, evidence in favor of German stereotype. I worry that the tracking might not be fair in practice in the US
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Well, that is generally a good guideline for socialized programs isn't it? Don't waste resources on people who don't actually want them, or can't substantially benefit from them. College is not actually terribly useful to many people, maybe most people. You need to have both the interest and the aptitude or you're just wasting everyone's time, and both you and society would be better off if you pursued an apprenticeship or other, less intellectual, career path.
How many college educated people do you know
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One semester of bad grades, and out the door German college students go.
Complete nonsense. Where did you get that idea? If that were true, I wouldn't have a terminal degree in computer science...
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My entire German extended family.
It is true.
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My entire German extended family.
It is true.
Well, there are at least two models of the world in which this statement is true. Either your entire German extended family consists of zero people, or they are lying.
The German education system has a lot of problems, but throwing out students after one semester of "bad grades" is not among them.
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It means that the people who want 'free college for all' and point to Germany are fucking liars.
'Free college for all' isn't even a worthwhile goal. Just stupid.
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Germany came damned close to dominating much of Europe, and if it had kept the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it might not have had an Eastern Front at all. That was a strategic blunder driven as much by the Nazis perverse race views as by any military necessity to drive the Communists east of the Urals. As it was, it took the combined might of the British Empire, the United States and the Soviet Union to beat Germany. We're talking the pre-eminent military powers of the mid-20th century. As to WWI, well, Germany
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The general theory has been since 1945 that it's probably best if Germany's defense is largely taken care of by other people. A unified German state with a strong military has prosecuted three major wars, one of which was pretty damned successful (the Franco-Prussian War), and two of which required the combined might of the Allied Powers to defeat. Those last two wars are the most destructive conflicts in human history, so I'd say guaranteeing Germany's territorial integrity is in everyone's best interests.
US troops in Germany (or Japan) (Score:2)
Maybe keeping the German (and Japanese) military small is worth the money from the US to help prevent a repeat of their historical behavior
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Only after Britain and France launched the largest land invasion in history on their Western flank, and even then it took ten months of concerted effort by all three Allied Powers to bring Germany to its knees.
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The US was quite busy with its own Western front - the Pacific.
Had it not been, Europe wouldn't have taken nearly so long after the US decided to get in.
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I hate to burst your little bubble, but that's also the trouble with capitalism.
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Your comment didn't break anyone's bubble.
Just compare life in Eastern Europe following WWII with life in the West. Which society would you have rather lived in, the one which froze 1932 and made it last until 1989, or the one that became the most wealthy and powerful society with the highest number of middle class citizens in the world since the Roman Empire? Stole it? Right. If you feel like getting rich quickly, go out and rob a bunch of poor people and see how much wealth that gets you.
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Or, compare Pinochet's Chile with current day Denmark or Canada. Which one would you rather live in?
Re: The long fall to Socialism (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
Rice University is a private institution, so this is charity, not "socialism".
They may have done a cost-benefit analysis and figured what they will lose on tuition, they will make up in endowment contributions from grateful future alumni who are earning and investing rather than trying to pay down debt.
more billionaires (Score:2)
Howard Hughes was Rice's first potential billion dollar donor but he got crosswise and left his billions in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Probably something about divorcing the Founder's niece after screwing too many Hollywood actresses in the 20s, and wanting his name on the proposed medical school.
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Rice University is a private institution, so this is charity, not "socialism".
Well said. Rice has a large endowment fund and can afford to shift to a model of "tuition paid by rich alums who donate". That's my favorite model for paying for college, as the university has to create rich alums who credit the university for their success, if they want to continue.
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That's my favorite model for paying for college, as the university has to create rich alums who credit the university for their success, if they want to continue.
Hopefully more universities will follow suit until it becomes what the market expects from universities: to not only instill pure knowledge but promote learning in philosophical values such as generosity as well, or "being a decent human being". If the performance and value a school brings to the table in terms of lifelong learning and ear
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Well said. Rice has a large endowment fund and can afford to shift to a model of "tuition paid by rich alums who donate".
You literally made that motive up - Rice never claimed that was their motive.
They've got $5.5BN in the bank, they are offering varying grants based on family needs, up to 100% of tuition and expenses. Why is everyone acting like this is something new? Universities have offered tuition assistance to poor/low-income students of merit, the change Rice is making to that program is that they are considering families earning up to $130K/year as "low-income" and deserving of tuition assistance.
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The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend.
The problem with all 'isms is that eventually you run out of money.
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What about hoboism?
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What about hoboism?
No money to run out of, I suppose. In any event, most people end up broke.
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The US is all about forced morality. See also: Prohibition, the War on Some Drugs, historic bans on interracial marriage, the KKK, and Draconian anti-prostitution laws that punish sex workers.
Don't forget Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites owned by those who own the ones I just listed. If you don't post or upload videos which agree with their corporate political POV then you are shadow banned, banned, suspended or your account is deleted. IOW, digitally, you are lined up against the wall and shot if your POV isn't Marxist. IF those folks every get power in DC then there is a good chance Conservatives will be physically lined up against the wall and shot. AntiFa, their thug arm, is
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That's why you sign up for the Coast Guard or the Air Condition Force. Or, soon, the Space Force.
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"Sorry kids, I'm not going to pay for you to go to college. I'm also writing you out of my will. I want to make sure you work hard and grow up struggling every step of the way so that you can be just like me! You'll thank me someday."
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Or stop paying univeristy presidents high salaries that rival what CEOs make.
Re:lower actual cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Not just the university presidents.
You listed some university presidents with very high salaries. Let's compare to the head football coaches for those same schools.
1. Arizona State: the president makes $1.5mil, the football coach makes $3.2mil.
Your second university listed, University of Texas, paid it's chancellor $1.5mil. In the past three years, they paid their football coaches an unbelievable $54 million.
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
You can go right down that list and see that university football coaches are making several times more than the presidents of the universities. In fact, in every single case, they are the highest paid public employee of their respective states.
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https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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1. Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University $1,554,058
Arizona State has 51,000 enrolled students, paying either $10/28K each year - call the average tuition $20K, times 51,000 students, and it is a Billion dollar/year business, so paying the President/CEO 1/10th of 1% of revenues isn't really an issue. If you eliminate the President's salary, you'll save $20/year per student - does that really make a difference? $28,000 becoming $27,980 doesn't make college more affordable in any meaningful way.
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Is that university good? No one I know earns $65000/y, a free trip sounds good!
I didn't read the article so it might say... but a lot of Universities charge more for people out of state- and even more for people out of country. This may not be free for people not in the US- but check, you might be in luck.
in the beginning... (Score:2)
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If only you knew the difference between Marxism and socialism.
Is the military Marxist?