Differential net tuition coming out in the open

[barrons]

<p>[How</a> Much Do You Pay for College? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Do-You-Pay-for/137043/]How”>http://chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Do-You-Pay-for/137043/)</p>

[NJres]

<p>That article made me squirm. What is this “class” he speaks of? Throwing around a lot of undefined terms, like “working class”. Unless I missed it, the author did not mention how much he pays for his daughter to attend Middlebury.

Some students squirm in their seats, Koplinka-Loehr said, but the forums provide a space where people can share their “guilt about having money or not having money.”

</p>

<p>Guilt about having money? Guilt about paying MORE than your classmate? And lets lump together the landed super rich with multi million dollar passive incomes with the wage slaves who cleverly saved for college for 20 years and are not quite as clever about manipulating finances and negotiating the financial aid maze.</p>

[bluebayou]

<p>I’m “shocked, shocked…” (Well not really, because I’ve posted about this for years.)</p>

<p>

On the math and verbal sections of the SAT, socioeconomic disadvantage imposes a 399-point penalty on low-income students compared with the most advantaged…

</p>

<p>

Meanwhile, at Washington University in St. Louis, a student, Chase Sackett, was concerned that among top colleges, his ranked last in Pell Grant recipients.

</p>

<p>

At the top 20 American law schools, Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, found in a recent study, just 2 percent of students came from the bottom socioeconomic quartile, while more than three-quarters hailed from the richest quartile.

</p>

<p>And the Harvard-educated author (Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law) could not connect the dots? (Doh! Colleges and particularly law schools use test scores for admissions. Indeed, the author’s LS has the highest test scores in the land.)</p>

[Bay]

<p>I assume that the reason the numbers pan out the way they do, is because colleges like Middlebury (and probably every other college) need full pay students to survive, and plenty of non-rich, non-FA eligible families seek out cheaper education routes because they cannot manage the $56K per year regardless of whether the FA calculator says they can.</p>

[Dad_of_3]

<p>

It is hard to know precisely why colleges turned a blind eye to class while maintaining a relatively more progressive stance on issues of race and gender.

I thought it was obvious - from the college’s perspective of portraying themselves as one promoting diversity, a brochure with rich and poor guys doesn’t exactly “show” diversity while one with different races and gender does more readily. </p>

<p>From the other side if the progressive stance is based on SES, more rich and middle class URMs will lose out to low income ORMs and whites than poor URMs gaining at the expense of rich ORMs and whites, so they prefer the status quo of classifying by race.</p>

[dstark]

<p>Barrons, I love your link. Talking about class is kind of taboo in this country so why should we surprised that class isn’t part of the discussion in college?</p>

<p>I love the signs about how much each family contributes to Middlebury. What is amazing to me is that most families can’t afford the 16,000 a year a couple of students families are contributing much less the 56,000 a year it costs “full” payers.</p>

[Bay]

<p>It is generally “taboo” from the perspective of good manners, to talk about how much money has or can afford. What do you think the goal is, in talking about how much each pays? Not discussing it protects those who don’t make as much or make an insane amount from being looked at as <em>different.</em> We already can know how many are full-pay, on FA, Pell recipients, from published data. Why do students need to know exactly who paid what? Perhaps the goal is to show that no matter how much money one has, <em>we are all the same?</em></p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>I don’t get it either. I would never want my kid “advertising” on campus or sharing with his friends or the greater college community that he was full-pay. That is no one’s business other than ours. I can think of nothing stupider than a well-to-do person advertising exactly how much he makes / can afford. He’s comfortable. That’s all anyone needs to know.</p>

[SaintSaens]

<p>I realized during my freshman year that anyone who says the cost of attendance is full-pay. Other than that I didn’t know much about most student’s financial situations.</p>

<p>I don’t think talking about how much you pay for college is a particularly good way to start discussion about class issues. I also disagree with the premise of the article, which is that discussion of racial discrimination has eclipsed discussion of class differences. I think that class reductionism is too common when discussions of race come up. While it is important to consider how issues of economic class and race are often related, sometimes people just reduce racial issues entirely into class issues.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

I also disagree with the premise of the article, which is that discussion of racial discrimination has eclipsed discussion of class differences.

</p>

<p>I agree with you. The implication is that colleges are not doing enough for low-income applicants, but the discussion ignores that colleges have limited budgets. It is one thing to give a special look at the son of two wealthy Black physicians, and another to give a special look at a dirt-poor White kid. It is more difficult to admit the poor White kid who will need a full-ride in order to attend, unless a college has an unlimited budget. I don’t think there are any colleges in America that have unlimited budgets.</p>

[circuitrider]

<p>I’m not sure what the purpose of this article was other than to put Middlebury on the spot (unfairly.) Using Amherst as a benchmark is a little silly considering that it took the exertions of an ambitious president and a hefty endowment that has very little else to “endow” other than the Folger Library in Washington, DC, to get them to double their number of Pell Grant recipients from the 12% level just a few years ago to 20% in the the most recent Washington Monthy poll (or, the “Mother Theresa poll”, as Xiggi so disparagingly likes to call it.)</p>

<p>If the author in the original article thinks Amherst and Middlebury or any other high-priced college can easily pony up the dollars to enroll 40% of their incoming classes with high-need Pell Grant recipients, he must have rocks in his head. The maximum Pell Grant is only $5,000 (and only after Obama got Congress to raise it in 2009.) That means it covers only 10% of the tuition of a NESCAC college. The other 90% comes from the college’s own funds.</p>

<p>Btw, in researching this post I came across the following op-ed with a beautiful quote about the “usefulness” of a liberal arts education for bright workiing class kids:

But I would like to point out that my perfectly ordinary education, received in public schools and a land grant university, is not merely the foundation on which I make a living. My education made my life. In a sometimes ugly world, my schooling opened a trap door to a bottomless pit of beauty — to Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong and Frank Lloyd Wright, to the old movies and old masters that have been my constant companions in my unalienable pursuit of happiness.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31vowell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31vowell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;