<p>I’m fine with students and parents choosing whatever school they want, IF It does not become a cost society is asked to pay.</p>
<p>High priced schools slashing tuition costs can only be interpreted in context: How competitive are they, and how do they treat other parts of the financial package. E.g., if a school cuts tuition cost but also cuts grant money then they are just playing a shell game meant to improve marketing.</p>
<p>I live in New Mexico, the land of education under achievement.</p>
<p>Every couple of years a politician in Santa Fe grandstands a little and points out that UNM (and the other state colleges) take up a considerable amount of the tax base, but graduate a very modest number of students, and then usually in fields that could be handled by apprenticeship or a CC. So far no actual reforms (other than grade inflation) have occurred because the public is unwilling to make the colleges selective, arguing that our Hispanic and native Indian students would be excluded.</p>
<p>To my mind not right or wrong, just a cost the public must be aware of and accept.</p>
<p>I will say what is wrong, based on my son’s attendance and stories of his friends, many on scholarship: most are not serious students. They do the minimum (or sometimes less) needed to get by. It has been noticed; a friend of the family who is head of an engineering group at a local DOE lab will in general not hire local graduates. He has been burned one too many times. We have dumbed down the schools, and are dumbing down the colleges. We will try to dumb down the work-place, but in the end the world competes, and we all suffer the consequences.</p>
<p>Parenthetically, dumbed down flagships still offer a great education for the right student. My sophomore son is a science kid who takes math, physics, chemistry, and comp-sci every semester, and is on track to graduate in four years with two science degrees, minors in the other fields, and a fair amount of local level grad classwork. He also interns in two research labs. He is quite clear, to himself, and to his gf and friends, that “school comes first.” He gets some ribbing and some whining, but he is following a fantastic path. Unfortunately at his school, he has little company.</p>
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<p>From the perspective of most parents I’ve observed, a kid who eked their way to graduation with a -B or below average has demonstrated he/she is a risky bet when it comes to determining whether said kid will make the most of the parental gift of a college educational opportunity, end up flunking out within a few semesters, or arguably worse…floundering to graduation with a college GPA well south of a 3.0 with uncertain job prospects.* </p>
<p>From that perspective, sending such kids to community colleges/commutable state universities makes much more sense financially and otherwise. </p>
<p>However, if they received such mediocre-poor grades because they attended a highly rigorous high school…whether public or private…this very parental mentality could place them in schools with far less academic rigor/challenge than they actually need. That was the situation with dozens of C/D average high school classmates who started out at a State/City university campuses and ended up transferring up to elite LACs/Universities like Reed, CMU, Brown, and Columbia because they felt so underwhelmed and hamstrung by a bureaucracy which won’t allow them to skip to more advanced courses. </p>
<p>There is also the idea that only the very high performers in school/life should merit special recognition whether it comes in the form of public awards/acknowledgments or nice dorm accommodations. Giving such plaudits to average/below average students is often seen as devaluing the high achievers similar to how a given currency is devalued by inflation when too much of it is introduced into a given economy. </p>
<p>This is illustrated by much media angst about “helicopter parents” driving the “everyone gets a trophy” philosophy in sports and academics which critics complain is failing to prepare their kids for situations where there are clear winners and losers and how to deal being either with good grace. </p>
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<li>Had an older cousin who graduated from as a STEM major from URochester in the late '80s who emphasized that one should never allow their cumulative college GPA to fall below a 3.0. Reason for that was from his harsh experience of having interviewers suddenly end interviews and having to search for work 6 months after graduation just because his GPA was ten-thousandth of a point below a 3.0 when most better performing classmates he knew already had job offers since the previous semester.</li>
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<p>I’m another fan of Sewanee. It’s one of the most beautiful campuses out there (ranked #9 on Princeton Review) and is the perfect fit for a kid who was a solid student in high school, wants a smaller environment, loves the outdoors, and doesn’t mind his/her campus being relatively isolated. Sewanee, aka “The University of the South”, has a 92 selectivity rating which although it isn’t Harvard, is far from a CC.</p>
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<p>Of course, that is easier for students now to do, due to [grade</a> inflation](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5Dgrade”>http://www.gradeinflation.com) since the 1980s.</p>
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<p>And 23% of the class has a GPA below 2.0, per post 26. Therefore, my statement that they are “admitting kids with C-/D+ averages in high school” is spot-on. </p>
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<p>Motivated, hard working, sincere kids whohave sub-2.0 GPAs in high school are not college material. A very few kids with sub-2.0 GPAs might turn it around in college. Why pay $21,000 to see if your kid is one of the rare exceptions? If he is, send him to community college, then when he turns it around, he can go and get that college experience you feel he is entitled to for the last two or three years.</p>
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<p>Then it’s highly unlikely they’re going to be in the 15-19 ACT range.</p>
<p>As an example, this poster got an 18 on the ACT and did not do well on the SAT either, <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1085497-did-atrocious-sat-sat-optional-suggestions-9.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1085497-did-atrocious-sat-sat-optional-suggestions-9.html</a> but has so far gotten into several schools with scholarship $$ <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13483055-post346.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13483055-post346.html</a></p>
<p>His GPA is in the low 3’s.</p>
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<p>Maybe. </p>
<p>However, an uncle who graduated with a CivE degree from Columbia SEAS in the late '50s with sub-3.0 GPA regretted how he felt he wasted his educational opportunity as his college years were “spent in a foggy cloud” whereas from comparing notes and seeing my grades…he emphatically stated I got far more out of my mid-late '90s undergrad experience than he did. </p>
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<p>True. </p>
<p>However, that was besides the point as far as their parents were concerned. For them…that C/D high school GPA…no matter how rigorous the school was…meant “they were only good enough for a state school”…no matter how much of an academic mismatch that school was in reality. Not too surprisingly…most found their parents were completely wrong and did something about it by transferring up.</p>
<p>annasdad…different strokes for different folks. No one is telling YOU to send your kiddo to a school YOU do not deem worthy of your money. That is your decision. I worked with high school students for a while who were near the bottom of their class. They were from high achieving families but were not high achievers themselves for a variety of GOOD reasons. Their parents had the same dreams YOU have when they set up those 529 savings or made a decision to fund college for their kids. They wanted their kids to experience college. I always told them…“there is a college for every child”. Some parents CHOSE to send their kids to expensive residential colleges that you would call worthless.</p>
<p>Re: retention rate…many of these schools have LOW retention rates for a lot of reasons…but so what? If this is where a student gets a good start, it’s highly possible that SOME who are leaving are tranferring to other schools. Or taking time off to work…or getting married…or having children themselves. Not every college student is the recent high school grad who will graduate in four years.</p>
<p>What is your issue with folks spending THEIR money on colleges for their kids that are less than stellar. It’s their business.</p>
<p>Claiming you are “reducing” tuition, but only for high achievers, is not reducing tuition, it’s giving merit scholarships:</p>
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Granted it is a pretty big scholarship for a fairly low achievement by CC standards (at least for the test scores - top 10% can be a challenge at a competitive HS even when your scores are 300 points above the cutoff), but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already handing out this kind of money to this portion of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>This seems more like a PR move than a real cut in tuition.</p>
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<p>Clearly, if you want to throw money away, that’s your right. But I’ve yet to see a single reason why one of these expensive colleges for low achievers is any better than a community college, other than they allow people with a lot of money to spend to give their entitled kids “the full college experience.”</p>
<p>This is a very funny thread. Majority of the posters arguing over annasdad’s unfortunate use of “underachievers”, with some sprinkling of Sewanee supporters.<br>
I just want to add that its strange to see Sewanee in the cohort of the other schools that reduced tuition. Sewanee is a nationally ranked LAC. The new head is a retired head from Middlebury and he is very committed to reducing the tuition, rather than playing the game of “here’s the sticker price, how can we reduce it for you”.
Academics are very strong and people are extremely nice. In my part of the world (NY Tristate area) it has become an up and comer that will only be stronger in years to come.</p>
<p>It seems that anything that you, yourself, cannot possibly afford, annasdad, is automatically the province of the “entitled.” </p>
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<p>Well, that settles it. Students with average ACT’s should live 4 to a room in unheated dorms with metal bunk beds and be served gruel in their dining halls. Anything else is just rewarding mediocrity.</p>
<p>Annasdad, I have twins. Now, mine are of similar academic merit. But what if I’d had one who was a top student and the other who was an average student? Assuming they were both hard workers, are you seriously suggesting that I should cut corners on my average student just because he’s academically average? I mean, should I not get him glasses or braces or new clothes either, since why bother? (Oh wait - I forgot, new clothes are of the devil too, since it’s morally superior to go to Goodwill than to Nordstrom’s).</p>
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<p>Except that’s a really nonsensical thought, because a nice dorm / good food / nice sports center isn’t zero-sum in the sense that there is only so much of it to go around, nor is it zero-sum in the sense that if the average students enjoy it, it tarnishes what the excellent students enjoy. Really, the average student enjoying steak and climbing the rock climbing wall on campus doesn’t take away from the excellent student doing so on his campus.</p>
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<p>One older aunt had two daughters who were academic achievers and a favorite son who fits the anti-intellectual academically below-average jock to a T. Initially, she sent them all to college in the '80s as fully pay students. D1 went to Georgetown, D2 to an honors program at a respectable midwestern state U, and the son to a Big-10 type school known mainly for its Div 1 sports. </p>
<p>Both daughters graduated with high honors from their respective colleges within 4 years while their brother ended up on a 5+ year plan filled with several instances of coming to the brink of academic dismissal for prioritizing partying, beer, and girls over his academic studies. After that experience, that same aunt said if she had to do it over again, she would have pulled the S out of college after the first warning of possible academic dismissal and have him work a retail/service job so he would get some perspective and so save on the additional outlays of money she incurred. She also advised her younger sisters…including my mother to make it clear that it was a mistake to tolerate grade reports filled mostly with C - F type grades and that parents facing that situation need to seriously consider pulling them completely out of college until they are mature enough to go back. </p>
<p>As the much younger cousin…ended up getting lots of what I felt was patronizing “advice” until I heard more about my older cousins’ stories. It turned out most of that advice was based on panicked fears I may end up like him. While understandable…it was weird considering we’re near polar opposites in terms of academic orientation and interests(Still have a hard time getting our culture’s adoration of Div. I type sports…especially to the detriment of a given school’s academic budget).</p>
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<p>However, many people do feel that it is a zero-sum game because restricting it to an exclusive few is one way to demonstrate how special those awards are along with its recipients. If the average person could enjoy something that was once commonly associated with an exclusive few…it loses a certain cachet appealing to many people. </p>
<p>It is one reason why marketers of high-end products try their best to make their products sufficiently accessible to the middle class so they could get a taste of what “the elites” enjoy while doing their best to conceal their true intentions to appeal to a portion of the mass market and thus, lose that exclusive cachet. </p>
<p>It was also a reason why sumptuary laws existed in pre-modern societies. A marker of aristocracy/eliteness is rendered meaningless when a commoner could wear/use the same marker merely by paying for it rather than having it bestowed upon them by virtue of their socially-constructed elite status.</p>
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<p>Flame all you want. I’m still waiting for that one reason (other than they “deserve a college experience”) for paying $21,000 to send a low achieving kid to a college when they can get the same educational experience for $5,000. </p>
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<p>No, by all means, take both the kids to Nordstrom’s. You’ve got it, why not flaunt it?</p>
<p>Not that this has anything at all to do with the subject of the thread, of course …</p>
<p>Now what if your twins were very different kids - one an incredibly hard worker and the other an incorrigible slacker (I realize that such a thing would not be possible with your kids, but just try to imagine). Would you be willing to shell out big bucks to send the slacker to a Lincoln College?</p>
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<p>All you want is ONE reason…? Here it is: Because the family WANTS to do that. And that is good enough reason in my mind.</p>
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<p>But a nice dorm, student center, etc. aren’t AWARDS. They aren’t things handed out only to people who “deserve” them. Those are things available to anyone who can pay the money for them. </p>
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<p>You attach a lot of morality to simple consumer choices, don’t you? There’s nothing inherently good, bad or indifferent about buying clothing at Nordstrom’s (or insert whatever other consumer activity you prefer). It’s just a choice that’s values-neutral, unless you’re robbing the store, I suppose. And it certainly isn’t “flaunting.” People wearing clothing from Nordstrom’s are just … wearing clothing. They aren’t bragging or displaying price tags. I think you’ve got some … interesting perspective on things you personally can’t afford. There are plenty of things I can’t afford, but I don’t begrudge people who can, their enjoyment of those things. If they earned that money honestly, more power to them. Do you also think it’s “flaunting” if people go on, say, European vacations? </p>
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<p>No, but that wouldn’t have anything to do with the grades. That would have to do with the work ethic. Somehow you’ve assumed that all average / mediocre ACT students must have been slackers. Maybe they are learning-disabled. Maybe they are just not super-bright, but they are nice, hardworking students. Really, that’s ok. </p>
<p>And in the final analysis, it’s not my money, so I’m not really certain how it affects me.</p>
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<p>That’s still irrelevant here, because the builder of (say) the climbing wall at Harvard wants to sell climbing walls to Average State U’s student center as well, and has little incentive to keep climbing walls (or whatever other student luxury / perk) limited.</p>