Princeton Will Cover All College Costs For Families Making Up To $100,000 (bloomberg.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Princeton University said it will cover all expenses for most families making as much as $100,000 a year and slash costs for those that earn more. The Ivy League school, among the world's richest, is continuing its "national leadership in the area of financial aid as families across the income spectrum struggle with rising college costs," the New Jersey university said Thursday in a statement. Roughly 1,500 undergraduates, about 25% of the student body, will pay nothing for tuition, housing and food under the plan, Princeton said. Previously, families making $65,000 or less were eligible. The costs for students whose families earn as much as $150,000 annually will be cut by almost half, and a "$3,500 student contribution typically earned through summer savings and campus work will be eliminated," the university said. "The total cost to attend Princeton this year is $79,540," notes Bloomberg. "The school's endowment totaled $37.7 billion at the end of June 2021."
Free education at last (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out you just need to make the schools so fucking rich, education becomes just a PR and marketing expense. Very cool.
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New Jersey?!?!
ick....no thanks.
My modest Post-Scarcity Princeton Proposal (2008) (Score:2)
https://pdfernhout.net/reading... [pdfernhout.net] :-) With
"... And here is another suggestion that may seem totally counter to everything I said -- PU should *double* its tuition, maybe even *triple* it, for those who can easily pay, and otherwise make it free along the current lines for those who cannot pay. Seriously, if PU makes these transformations, or better ones, I predict the admissions department will have trouble keeping up with application processing even with tuition list price spiking $100K or $250K per year.
Rotten system (Score:2)
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Ok, maybe .. but so what? If they didn't do that .. those "poor" hard working students wouldn't have a Princeton to go to. Also, many kids go to Princeton because it can improve the chance of their future generation getting an education there. If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't don't apply? Also, you can't get an 1000 SAT, have no athletic skill, and still expect to go to Princeton because your dad is rich. Find me a few examples, that prove otherwise. Don't you think many students/graduates would ta
Re:Rotten system (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not charity... it is trying to draw down an endowment that has gotten way too big and score a PR win in the process.
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Re:Rotten system (Score:4, Informative)
The gall of the scam is so incredible it almost deserves to work: Buy a college, admit your own half-witted kids unconditionally, then tell a few brilliant but naive students from around the world that you will generously waive the absurd tuition figure you pulled out of your ass if they'll sign up and make your kids look above average by association.
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Token "poor" student (Score:2)
Re:Token "poor" student (Score:4, Informative)
Glad to see the one token poor student they admit won't have to pay for the "privilege" of going there.
The fourth line of the summary says "25% of the student body".
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20% of their admits are students whose parents don't have a college education, so I doubt it is going to be a one token student.
Oh boy (Score:4, Funny)
That's basically like getting a college loan forgiven before you even get it. :-)
Republicans are going to be *so* mad a Biden now.
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I don't see them getting upset about the policy, they may get upset that the school has such a large endowment, but again it's a private school so they probably won't care.
It does seem odd to me to draw the line at 100k though. Most college students are at an age where they are "leaving the nest", their parents presumably won't be responsible for their health and wellbeing after college. And whether your parents make 100k a year or 300k a year, they are unlikely to be able to provide 100% of their kid's
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Since what Princeton is doing isn't unconstitutional like the student loan handout, I can't see why any Republican would get mad at Biden for it.
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Since what Princeton is doing isn't unconstitutional like the student loan handout, ...
Refresh my memory, where in the Constitution does it prohibit forgiving student loans?
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Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution.
https://constitution.congress.... [congress.gov]
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Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution.
https://constitution.congress.... [congress.gov]
Not really sure that applies here, but I'm not a Constitutional Scholar (and I'm guessing you're not either). This program only applies to federal student loans. Those federal loans were dispersed according to law (as in the Article you noted). The Executive Order simply forgives (some of) that money, meaning it doesn't have to be paid back. Perhaps just a technically, but (if so) that may make the difference with regard to its validity. Time (and Republican lawsuits) will tell. The Executive Branch is
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However you choose to word it, he is spending $500 billion that was not allocated by congress, which is unconstitutional. Congress is the only ones who can allocate funds from the treasury. Other presidents have moved funds, but Biden says he is using the deficit reductions to pay for it...which is rather ignorant of what the deficit is, and what the reductions are, but that is not the subject here.
I am not saying either way about the morality of it. The PPP loans were passed by congress, and the law pro
Harvard hasn't caused enough grief? (Score:1)
We're still stuck with the fucked Von Neumann / Princeton shared I/D shit show.
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It could be worse, they could all be using OO like them Californians.
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Educational priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether an educational institution puts more emphasis on recruiting individual smarts or rich families is up to them. Over time hopefully more smart kids will win out over more rich kids. The alternative does not bode well for society in a global competition.
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Nope, here's why this happens.
The rich kids are more often than not dumb as doorknobs. But they are rich, so you need them as an Ivy league school because you want to appear exclusive. And since they're rich and pay for the privilege to go through your school, they also want results, i.e. degrees. On the other hand, if those jewel-encrusted doorstops are all you produce, your degree will soon become the laughing stock of the actual industry out there that needs people who can actually do something but write
books / other fees not covered? (Score:2)
books / other fees not covered?
This is how education assistance should work (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgiving student loans of people relative well off is a sap in the face to poorer people who worked butts off to go to community colleges they knew they could afford.
This is a much better system, where if you get into a college the college will just forgo tuition, rather than larding up ridiculous amounts of debt on every student including some who will never be able to pay it.
Now if only colleges could solve admission racism that denies equal opportunity to asian students...
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Forgiving student loans of people relative well off is a sap in the face to poorer people who worked butts off to go to community colleges they knew they could afford.
Bailing out companies relative well off is a sap in the face to smaller companies who worked butts off to not take on more debt or risk than they could afford.
Yes absolutely (Score:2)
Bailing out companies relative well off is a sap in the face to smaller companies
That is equally, if not even more, correct.
The government has no business bailing out any business, with MAYBE the exception of critical services like power. Even then the former owners should be removed and the company auctioned off probably.
They especially have no business bailing out HyperGlobalMegaCorp just so it can maintain profit margins for that week.
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Like the poor saps they are, pardon the pun. Living and working exactly the same way, but taking the available loans and investing the money instead, would get them well on their way to having some real wealth.
"But I did X to avoid loans!" - Yes, and it was a terrible financial decision.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you'd actually read the stories and site you linked, you'd see that all of these schools had the same policy and Princeton upped its no-parent-contribution limit to $100k this year where the others upped it to $75k. Princeton was also the first in the country to stop including loans in financial aid packages (in 2001).
First invest +$700,000 to get into Princeton (Score:3)
Or does anyone have the preception that you just go straight from a public school to Princeton?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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What's wrong with Stanford from a religious perspective? They even have a church as a centerpiece of the campus.
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ok, that still doesn't answer the question.
New Plan: (Score:2)
Or put another way (Score:2)
Be inclusive (Score:2)
If they really wanted to be inclusive, they would admit people regardless of their academic record.
Re:Be inclusive (Score:4, Informative)
They already do that... those students are called "Legacies"
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"Regardless of their... and how much money their parents pay in 'gifts' ".
Don't get too impressed. (Score:3)
Try a little googling - a number of the prestigious universities in the US have massive endowments built from the accumulated & compounded wealth created from both inflated tuition fees, and contributions by alumni, over many decades. At this point, they no longer need to charge any tuition at all and could teach all their students while being fully funded by the compounding interest of those mountains of money.
This gesture is more an act of hollow virtue signalling, than anything else. After president Obama nationalized the student loan program and effectively removed the borrowing limits, these universities got even fatter. Most of them raised their tuition fees at rather obscene rates, knowing the kids entering their freshman classes would unwisely borrow huge piles of cash, which they would hand over to these schools - fattening the already full coffers while leaving the inflated debt hanging about their necks. Now, rather than forcing the universities to reverse their plundering and repay the kids, the federal government is considering "loan forgiveness", which will indirectly be a subsidy for all the colleges that acted like the worst loan sharks (doing so by taking the money from taxpayers, many of whom never got to go to college).
Pale horse (Score:2)
College coursework (Score:1)