MIT Undergrads With Family Income Below $200K Can Attend Tuition-free In 2025 (mit.edu) 59
schwit1 writes: Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting next fall, thanks to newly expanded financial aid. Eighty percent of American households meet this income threshold.
And for the 50 percent of American families with income below $100,000, parents can expect to pay nothing at all toward the full cost of their students' MIT education, which includes tuition as well as housing, dining, fees, and an allowance for books and personal expenses.
This $100,000 threshold is up from $75,000 this year, while next year's $200,000 threshold for tuition-free attendance will increase from its current level of $140,000.
And for the 50 percent of American families with income below $100,000, parents can expect to pay nothing at all toward the full cost of their students' MIT education, which includes tuition as well as housing, dining, fees, and an allowance for books and personal expenses.
This $100,000 threshold is up from $75,000 this year, while next year's $200,000 threshold for tuition-free attendance will increase from its current level of $140,000.
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Fun fact, but college was tuition free in America up until the 60s.
Not for MIT: https://cdn.libraries.mit.edu/... [mit.edu]
and I'd like to see a citation for other colleges.
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Re: It's like going back to 1950! (Score:1)
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Except you've got things completely backwards.
College used to be cheap because it was heavily government subsidized. We've steadily been decreasing the amount of government funding to college for decades and replacing it with loans. Now it's almost entirely paid for by the students.
It's expensive because we're treating education like a business run by market forces instead of as a public service.
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College used to be cheap because it was heavily government subsidized.
Is that really true? Could you provide some data backing this up?
From what I remember here in California, UC and CSU tuition used to be lower but the state cut some funding. I don't ever recall there being substantial federal tuition subsidies or general funding. The Feds have long supported universities through research grants but that isn't supposed to be used to subsidize tuition, at least not for undergraduates. I believe over the years schools have been including more and more "overhead" in their grant
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That explains why food costs so much, from all the government subsidies to farmers. Same thing for gasoline. The billions of dollars in subsidies oil companies receive each year is driving up the cost for consumers. And let us not forget sugar. Sugar would be far cheaper, and could be used instead of subsidized corn syrup, were it not for the sugar subsidies.
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When the government subsidizes something, its cost rise, because the market will bear more money for it. That explains why food costs so much, from all the government subsidies to farmers. Same thing for gasoline. The billions of dollars in subsidies oil companies receive each year is driving up the cost for consumers. And let us not forget sugar. Sugar would be far cheaper, and could be used instead of subsidized corn syrup, were it not for the sugar subsidies.
Excellent sarcasm, smooth wombat; I laughed. I presume you know how these subsidies are different, so I'll write out for others' sake: Suppose people want diamond tennis bracelets from Tiffany's, but they have a hard time buying them because the bracelets cost so much. Now a rich person for some reason wants to help more people get bracelets from Tiffany's and offers to give everyone half the cost of the bracelet, making them easier to buy. This works to expand access, only until Tiffany's learns about t
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Not for other colleges or universities, either. I've told rsilvergun this in the recent past (pointing to https://time.com/4472261/colle... [time.com] as one example), but apparently he just wants to lie about it.
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University of California did not charge tuition until the 1960s. It's in the state constitution, I believe. Even today, UC does not charge tuition; they just charge an "education fee." Not the same thing. For example, tuition was known as "tuition," while the education fee is known as "education fee."
Public Universities were (Score:2)
It was the most prosperous time in American history.
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https://www.peoplesworld.org/a... [peoplesworld.org]
It was the most prosperous time in American history.
No, they weren't. But, hey, you're a progressive and all they all do is lie, so..
Prove rsilvergun wrong then. He provided a reference. You haven't.
Re:It's like going back to 1950! (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like about 5%-7% [wikimedia.org] got through college one way or another.
You assume you would have been among them?
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That 5-7% were still paying tuition - college wasn't free.
Even ignoring the government programs that were created to pay for broader access to education - the GI Bill of 1944 [wikipedia.org], the Higher Education Act of 1965 [wikipedia.org] - you only have to remember old movies to realize the original statement was a crock. Take that holiday classic, 1946's It's a Wonderful Life... early in the movie, George Bailey's parents are wishing they could figure out how to afford to send both sons to college at the same time.
Re:It's like going back to 1950! (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty amazing that the government had to create the GI Bill [wikipedia.org] in 1944 to, among other things, help all those servicemen pay tuition at these supposedly free colleges!
Because there's nothing else but tuition (Score:2)
I'll just leave this here: https://www.peoplesworld.org/a... [peoplesworld.org]
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Re:It's like going back to 1950! (Score:5, Informative)
Fun fact, but college was tuition free in America up until the 60s. The current mess took us 60+ years to dig ourselves into.
Tuition was free at a limited number of public colleges, most notably the City Colleges of NYC, and Cal Berkeley. Most schools though, including state schools, charged tuition. It was just a lot cheaper at state schools back then for a number of reasons. In my younger years, I befriended a retired construction company exec who had been temporarily brought onboard as a consultant for one of our projects. He worked with a number of men of similar age and experience. I was quite amazed to find out that they paid all their tuition, books, and boarding expenses out of construction jobs they worked in the summer between school years. There was also far less concern with things like rankings (i.e. US News and World Reports rankings of colleges by prestige). These men went to big state universities in the South, and all of them told me "Back then, if you could pay your tuition and convince the school you could learn, you got in". The notion of competing with Ivies by promoting exclusivity wasn't nearly as much of a thing as it is today.
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Pols 30 years ago: Let's help students with easy loans! We'll guarantee the loans!
Banks and universities: Ok!
30 years of nickle dime increases later: Hey, why is it so expensive?
Universities: We don't know, but it's certainly not supra-inflation increases because we can get away with adding a few dollars to your monthly payments, much easier to swallow.
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As this is the cause, Congress could reverse back out of it by refusing to guarantee loans to universities that increase tuition by more than 2%. Slow, easy unwinding.
But that's not the goal. The goal is to collapse of the system, followed by Congress picking up the pieces, AKA takeover.
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This fun fact is basically a myth:
https://factmyth.com/factoids/... [factmyth.com]
It's sort of an interesting one, it's like how people say "for profit healthcare was illegal until Nixon." There's this teeny tiny fact that sort of makes it understandable where that came from, but it's objectively not true. This one is particularly ironic, because no, the true part did not apply to MIT, so it's not like that at all.
I'm all for free education (Score:1)
But this news out of the US surprises me. $200k is not chump change, those families could afford some of the tuition.
Re:I'm all for free education (Score:5, Informative)
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MIT Tuition is $62k/yr (Source: https://news.mit.edu/2024/fina... [mit.edu]). Going from $85k (tuition + housing + food, etc, MIT's own estimate from the same website) down to $23k is HUGE.
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Most schools in the US require students to live on campus in expensive housing.
That's news to me. Got some citations?
It is free where I live (Score:2)
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Saudi Arabia?
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In your rich Dad's house?
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Some place where stupid question like this are routine?
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Some NATO country where American taxpayers fund most of your national defense so you get free school and healthcare and they get shit options for both?
BTW that's all about to end.
MIT's free online classes are very fun too. (Score:3)
Top Schools Don't Really Need Tuition (Score:2, Insightful)
The dirty secret of the very top schools (i.e. the MITs, Harvards, Yale's of the world) is that they don't really need to charge tuition at all. The earnings on their endowments are many multiples of what they charge in tuition. They basically charge tuition because they can. And I suppose charging big tuition for rich folks who won't suffer much for it makes sense. The system is great for middle class kids who can actually get in, but the student bodies of these schools tends to skew wealthy anyways.
Most m
Re:Top Schools Don't Really Need Tuition (Score:5, Insightful)
The dirty secret of the very top schools (i.e. the MITs, Harvards, Yale's of the world) is that they don't really need to charge tuition at all. The earnings on their endowments are many multiples of what they charge in tuition.
Harvard's endowment is 50 billion. With less than 7500 undergrads, they could cover the tuition and books of every single undergrad off the interest income of the endowment alone. Thus, the criticism:
"Harvard is not a university. It's a Hedge Fund that offers classes" - Scott Galloway
This means absolutely nothing (Score:2)
The larger issue is that the top universities haven't expanded their student pool in a century, while the population has exploded. The se
Re:This means absolutely nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
There is certainly a thumb on the scale at higher-level schools because only upper middle-class and rich kids can afford to spend their four years in high school entirely focused on building up their college admission resume. But that's not the same thing as slots specifically set aside for children of famous people. I'm doubly inclined to be skeptical because rich and famous people have been convicted of doing illegal things to get their kids into these schools which would seem redundant if they had reserved spots.
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The larger issue is that the top universities haven't expanded their student pool in a century, while the population has exploded.
A quick google tells me that Harvard's total enrollment was 12K in 2011 and 27K in 2022, so that doesn't seem to be accurate. https://harvardopendata.org/pr... [harvardopendata.org]
The seats at those universities are reserved for a) kids of the super-wealthy, b) kids of famous people, c) kids of the powerful and d) 10% of the slots are left over to be handed out competitively.
May be true for the Ivy-league schools, but MIT admissions don't really care if you're super wealthy or the child of famous people. (No? Name one famous person whose child went to MIT.)
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The sticker price to those top universities has been an illusion for decades. If that university decides they want a student, the tuition will be "as low as we need to make it in order to induce you to attend". With a 25 billion dollar endowment, MIT doesn't give a single rats ass about tuition money. That's less than the change that the president loses in his couch.
From what I recall when my kids were looking at colleges, tuition at top tier schools was around $65k. Actual prices averaged about half that. MIT has something like 4,500 undergraduates so that's roughly $150 million in tuition. Even with a $25 billion endowment, that isn't chump change. President Kornbluth absolutely cares about it. And yet, apparently not enough to keep the dollars flowing.
The larger issue is that the top universities haven't expanded their student pool in a century, while the population has exploded. The seats at those universities are reserved for a) kids of the super-wealthy, b) kids of famous people, c) kids of the powerful and d) 10% of the slots are left over to be handed out competitively. So, 100,000 top students apply to MIT, and 1000 spots are available. You can be an absolutely top 0.01 percent student and your chances of getting in are still garbage unless you fall into category a,b or c.
Just a side note: MIT has never admitted to having seats reserved for a, b, or c. They flatly deny ever using legacy
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Of course they haven’t admitted to doing legacy and prestige admissions. Why would they ever admit it? I dont mean to start a flame war, butreally. were you born yesterday?
A flood of applications is NOT a problem for them. Very easy to copy-paste the word “reject” into an extra 50,000 columns on the applicant spreads
MIT employees... recalculating (Score:1)
MIT has also long offered free tuition to children of its employees -- although they still have to earn admission on their own merits, of course, since MIT has no concept of "legacy" or anything close to it. Some MIT employees have household incomes over $200K, so the "College Childrens Scholarship Plan" still matters to them, but for those with household incomes under $200K, this new offering makes the CCS plan redundant.
So unless my household income sharply increases in the next several years (and the th
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MIT has also long offered free tuition to children of its employees -- although they still have to earn admission on their own merits, of course,
True for most universities.
Whew! (Score:2)
I still qualify!
Definitely no (Score:1, Troll)
Through a combination of a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, the wife and I surpass this threshold. So when it comes time for our kids to head off to school in about 15 years, it's a given we'd be the ones paying full freight wherever they go.
As such, I'll be fucked before I pay 80 or 90 thousand a year (in today dollars) to send them to a place where joining the campus Hamas chapter is an obligatory condition of engaging in campus social life. The way things stand now, it's going to be some state
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As such, I'll be fucked before I pay 80 or 90 thousand a year (in today dollars) to send them to a place where joining the campus Hamas chapter is an obligatory condition of engaging in campus social life.
You're in luck, because there are zero universities in the US where joining the campus Hamas chapter is an obligatory condition of engaging in campus social life. (even if campuses actually had Hamas chapters, which of course they don't.)
May seem that way from the clickbait headlines (outrage sells), but in the real world, it's not a big deal to 90% of the students, and more than 90% of the faculty.
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Unless your children are significantly less angry about their own conservative obsessions not being adopted by the entirety of society, these kinds of schools probably aren't right for them anyway. They tend to prioritize connection-making among the next generation of leaders rather than demonizing some of them at the outset.
If you surpass that $200k threshold, you shouldn't let costs determine your kids' opportunities. Bo
It's official, then! (Score:2)
I'm just a poor software engineer.
Yes, I like software engineering, but if I had known 20 years ago that software engineers would be considered underprivileged, I might have chosen a more practical career, such as art.
And no, I'm serious. I know of artists making more money than me.
What about interview? (Score:2)
Family Income (Score:2)
Dear MIT. I have been an emancipated minor since my parents threw me out at the age of 14. Please consider this fact when evaluating my application.
Please ignore that Bentley Continental and black credit card, both in my dad's name. I found them on the sidewalk.
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You might joke, but there have been cases of strategic moves to change schools during senior year to count as coming from an underprivileged area. That is only one 'trick' I've read about
endowments and new president (Score:2)
MIT has about $27 Billion in endowment money sitting in the bank. All universities in the united states have around $1 Trillion in endowments in total. I think this story has alot to do with Trump's winning, and the fact that most of these woke universities have been growing their endowments at the same time charging more and more higher rates for tuition. At the same time, they are promoting racism on their campuses. Trump announcing on November 1st [0] that they will be seizing endowments of universi