<p>Hanna…
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<p>Stated well and clear… The universities are buying the people they prefer, it’s the crass truth.</p>
<p>Sigh. Harvard could be charging a much higher price for its extremely wealthy students. Why does it not?</p>
<p>I sense a very rigid defense of Harvard afoot on this thread. I’m just citing Harvard as a case. The argument is not about Harvard, but FA at 100 percent need blind schools in general.</p>
<p>No no, you mean 100% meets need schools, not need blind. Or both. But not just need blind.</p>
<p>Well, definitely both. It wouldn’t be very meaningful if admission was not Need Blind. I’m essentially talking about the very big endowment schools in a position to offer such a policy.</p>
<p>And other posters on here are exactly right that the problems affecting affordability at schools with far smaller endowments is a bigger, more compelling problem.</p>
<p>I’ve just been curious for a few years why schools like Harvard do it the way they do it. There’s a lot of potential tuition that could be collected from a lot of very, very wealthy kids. It’s that hard cutoff that lumps the prosperous-but-not-rich in with the truly rich that puzzles me.</p>
<p>“Sigh. Harvard could be charging a much higher price for its extremely wealthy students. Why does it not?”</p>
<p>Because they aren’t listening to me. I’ve been telling them to do this for years. I wish they would.</p>
<p>The real reason is likely PR. You can charge almost any sum as long as your peers are doing the same. Harvard doesn’t want headlines saying “Harvard raises tuition to 2x Yale tuition!” even if the fine print is that Harvard is going to cost less for almost everyone. All of HYPSMC, but Harvard in particular, get a lot of national press whenever they make a move. Any one of them moving out in front with a big tuition hike would end up in a PR sinkhole. They have to move together, and incrementally, to get away with the increases.</p>
<p>“Only high school. But I read a lot”</p>
<p>It shows! You’re one of many examples of the contrast between being educated and being credentials – lots of people are one and not the other.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to compare this tuition question with the tax questions being debated in some cities. There’s the argument that the extremely high income folks are not a stable population that can reliably be taxed year after year, but rather a population with a lot of flux in and out. So cities that have hiked up taxes for the $1million+ income group find that their revenues are not very stable, year to year. Maybe that’s the thinking at the big endowment schools. </p>
<p>Would sure be interesting to be a fly on the wall . . .</p>
<p>Perhaps trying to maximize revenue could lead to their non-profit status being threatened.</p>
<p>Imagine Harvard’s property tax bill if they were being charged what other office parks and apartment buildings in Cambridge are being charged. Imagine the income tax due on dorm revenues where the rents are many times higher than what the open market can charge.</p>
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<p>IIRC, you work with a literacy program of some kind already, right? </p>
<p>What kids in my income bracket (IMO) really need is someone to sit them down around 7th/8th grade and say “look, you CAN go to college but this is how you do it.” And not like a seminar, but through something like Big Brother/Big Sister. So many of my friends gave up hope because they were told (either explicitly or subliminally) that they would never make it to college and even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to afford it. By the time counselors got to talking with us sophomore/junior year, it was too late :(. </p>
<p>There are too many kids in my first school district (I was extremely fortunate to move to a better school district right before high school) who never did their homework or anything because they were too busy taking care of brothers and sisters, taking care of the house, etc. There’s just SO many obstacles for too many inner city, low income kids. The amount of kids in the Lansing school where I worked who didn’t eat sometimes on weekends was absolutely disgusting. We had a program that sent them home with backpacks of food on the weekends to make sure they had something to eat. These were mostly immigrant kids whose parents weren’t transitioning well though.</p>
<p>Luckily, this year in Michigan, every kid can go to certain places around the state to get meals. While there they have educational and recreational programs for free as well. So not only are these kids fed, but they’re doing something constructive. It’s one of the best things our governor has done and I would like to see it expanded in the future.</p>
<p>Romani, sitting down with a 7th/8th grader is one of the most difficult things an adult can do. I was a sub teacher for 5 years, and the only grades I refused to do were 6-8. It takes a very special person to connect with students at this age. I know it is the time they need the interaction most, but gosh, they make it hard. :)</p>
<p>I have to comment on this from way back: "One of my neighbors (with a kid going to a school with a big endowment) said she should have quit her job a year ago to get more FA now. Between taxes and less FA (versus if they had a lower income from her not working), working outside the home did not “pay.” Hindsight is 20/20. It is like winning the lottery, getting into one of these great-FA schools. So quitting your job is more likely to bite you in the rear than pay off. Only a gambler (or an idiot) would give up sure money in favor of the long shot great-FA-lottery hit.</p>
<p>I stopped working when my first was born. I worked in low-paying, part-time jobs after my kids got into school. I figured I would get a job around the time the oldest hit college, and I would have it made. That was about the time MI’s economy tanked. It took me two years to find a job, and it didn’t pay anything close to what I thought I would be able to earn. We were lucky to hit the FA lottery for D, but I still have used every penny of my income to pay for her & her brother (who did not hit the FA lottery). Life is easier lived backwards than it is forwards.</p>
<p>Personally, my H and I feel it is our responsibility to pay for our kids to go to college. We are amazed at people we know who earn a lot more than we do who feel their kids should pay for school themselves (“It’s his education, not mine”). To each his own, but we chose to bring them into the world, and we think it’s part of the deal.</p>
<p>One of my oldest and dearest friends has a family income that is the stuff of my dreams. She once shared with me that she feels it is unfair that their family cannot get financial aid. Her husband earns multiple times our household income. I guess the unfairness is that someone else gets it and she doesn’t? Does anyone ever think they have “enough” money?!</p>
<p>Romanigypsyeyes, I love your last post, because it was real, not some hypothetical.</p>
<p>There are tons of kids out there that don’t get a chance, and it is not because they are lazy or stupid. These kids aren’t getting opportunities because of where they are born, or their surroundings, because they don’t have roll models. They are hungry, and or their safety is in jeopardy.</p>
<p>I don’t know why some people like to blame the kids for the way they develop when the conditions for these kids is atrocious. I wouldn’t want to live in their conditions. I guess it makes people feel better to blame the kids for their problems.</p>
<p>Romanigypsyeyes, that post was very insightful. My D1 teaches those grades (if she can ever get a full-time job, but that’s another story) and I am going to show it to her.</p>
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<p>Who are these “some people” who blame kids for not lifting themselves from poverty and dysfunction? A lot of people, myself included, think we are squandering untold funds on ineffective k-12 education, and that much of the blame lies in our education union-based status quo wherein the teachers and the administrators benefits, security and income are the priority, not the disadvantaged kids. That said, I would also say that I do think “blame” can be assigned to parents who don’t marry or don’t stay together and who don’t raise their kids responsibly. But blaming the kids? </p>
<p>For goodness sake, I think you are reading to much Dickens and seeing 2012 America as Oliver Twist.</p>
<p>No. I’m not.</p>
<p>I am not going to get into it because if you can’t see, you can’t see.</p>
<p>What I know is this:</p>
<p>A family of 2 able bodied adults and no kids, who claim to be poor and on the brink of bankruptcy, should not be hiring laundry service to do all of their laundry. Especially when the family of 2 has 1 income, meaning one spouse spends all day at home.</p>
<p>And the family that eventually becomes the family of 3, who continues to do laundry service instead of saving for college education should not be given extra financial aid due to their low savings situation.</p>
<p>Lots of details for a hypothetical family.
;)</p>
<p>I would ask that this thread be locked. I find posts such as #112 offensive: my wife is a teacher and not only works hard but spends her own money on things for her class, has to take home school materials to clean them herself, etc. For people who aren’t involved in education to make blanket statements about what is wrong merely proves they are idiots. That some people are frankly too selfish and stupid to think beyond “it’s the unions” makes me see red. And that means this thread is no longer about anything other than people spreading their political nonsense.</p>
<p>Engineer, they’re NOT going to be given extra FA because of low savings. </p>
<p>What part of FA is based on INCOME almost entirely (unless you have very significant assets) is a lost concept to you? For FAFSA, assets are assessed at a whopping- wait for it- 5.6%. </p>
<p>zoose, good luck to your D. I know I couldn’t do it. Especially if she’s working at an inner city or low income school. </p>
<p>I just heard about 2 teenagers today from my home city who were found shot in the back of the head most likely in a drug deal gone bad. It’s just not that uncommon there whereas in the city I live now, it’s almost unheard of (ok, we did have that one guy that went crazy his junior and beheaded a guy… but that was a fluke). I firmly believe the kids themselves aren’t born any different, it’s all about how and where they’re raised. It’s so sad. </p>
<p>I see kids come into my shelter that I already know at 2, 3, 4 years old are likely not going to graduate high school because they have such crappy parents. One is abusive and the other just doesn’t care. So many of the mothers are so young (many younger than myself) and have no desire to take care of their children. I just feel so bad for these kids but there’s nothing I can do and their school districts can’t fix a sh**ty home life.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the solution is. I wish I did. I work with the aftermath, not the prevention.</p>
<p>Oh, and sew, I don’t know who these teachers are that you think are so well paid and such. In the school district where I worked, teachers had to buy their own COPY paper because they kept running out at school. They buy their own supplies and get paid pretty crappy especially considering what they go through every day.</p>
<p>I am so sick of the teacher blaming. It’s absolutely uncalled for and it’s no wonder people are turned off to teaching and we’re left with such a talent void in many schools.</p>
<p>[Only</a> 3 In 10 Rich Men Think Wealth Inequality Is A Problem: Survey](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Only 3 In 10 Rich Men Think Wealth Inequality Is A Problem: Survey | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>[Birth</a> Rate Plunges, Projected To Reach Lowest Level In Decades](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Birth Rate Plunges, Projected To Reach Lowest Level In Decades | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>
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<p>Very high income people tend to have a larger percentage of income from fluctuating investment income and gains/losses. This makes their income more volatile than that of others.</p>
<p>Re: [Only</a> 3 In 10 Rich Men Think Wealth Inequality Is A Problem: Survey](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Only 3 In 10 Rich Men Think Wealth Inequality Is A Problem: Survey | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>Perhaps because it has not (yet?) gotten as bad in the US as it has in some places where the wealthy have to hire armed guards and drive armored cars because they are kidnapping targets, or extreme left wing politicians gain substantial support from the desperate otherwise-hopeless poor grasping for anything that claims to help their situation.</p>