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You must be very wealthy. I think it’s great that you worry about the little people.</p>
<p>The wealthy didn’t become wealthy by making unsound financial decisions.</p>
<p>^^^
That is “generally” true but some inherit their money and then spend a lifetime making stupid financial decisions. Others are inclined to make unsound financial decisions mainly when it comes to their children (or mistresses).</p>
<p>“I’m not talking about them, either. I want to keep scarce college money away from those who truly don’t need it, those whom we all can agree don’t need it. To me, wealthy means those who have so much money that they don’t need to work (and I don’t mean the retired).”</p>
<p>If by “we all” you mean everybody, then all you can ask is for voluntary self-removal from the merit pool. You are a good example of that policy in action. As for using your operational definition of “happy and able to work for free”, the numbers are so small as to not matter as a matter of public policy.</p>
<p>At this point, I am confused regarding your underlying motivation beyond a desire to gain government assistance without regard for who is footing the bill.</p>
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<p>At an institution that promises to meet all financial need aid, the kid with the $50K family income would retain all grant aid. [But I will also admit that in this case losing the merit part of the award is usually not a big issue either, because the institution will simply replace the merit $$ from the endowment with need-based $$ from the endowment.]</p>
<p>At an institution that currently does not meet all need, the move away from merit to need-based aid would typically be connected to a commitment towards moving towards meeting all financial need or at least more financial need than before. In either case, the kid in my example would likely retain the full amount of his current aid—particularly since he’s still very likely to be among the “poorest” half of his college class.</p>
<p>And the number of students from families earning $30K/year is, in my humble opinion, a strawman argument: $30K/year is about 1.5 times the poverty level for a family of four. The vast, vast majority of students from families making this little money simply cannot win admission to selective universities because they do not have the stats. And even the exceptional lower income applicants find it very difficult in a number of ways (not all financial) to make the decision to go away to college rather than attend a local state U that is close to their family. I find it difficult to believe that a change in aid policy from (mixed merit/need based aid) to (only need based aid) by itself is going to magically increase the number of truly poor students at private colleges by a large enough number to severely impact financial aid to the students from families earning $50K to $75K. And finally, at many, if not most, $50K+ privates, those kids from families earning $50K to $70K/year are also under-represented in terms of the percentage of the student body relative to their better off middle class classmates from families with incomes of over $100K.</p>
<p>Now understand, I really believe that a <em>private</em> college should have the freedom to decide what it wants to do with its own institutional grant money. If it wants to go need-based aid only, then that’s fine with me. If it wants to stay mixed merit/need based, that’s also fine. And (to go to an extreme) if a private college wanted to go to nothing but merit aid and take no federal money for any need based program at all, then that’s also fine with me. It’s part of “freedom of assembly” in my opinion. </p>
<p>And if a private college asked me which approach I’d prefer it take with its funds, I’d say, "First do what you can to meet all students’ full need with federal loans, federal grants, federal work study, and institutional need-based grant aid, and then if there’s additional money for grant aid, set up a fine major merit based scholarship program to buy yourself some students who otherwise would choose to go (to a presumably more prestigious) elsewhere.</p>
<p>“the numbers are so small as to not matter as a matter of public policy”</p>
<p>You may be right; I don’t have the stats. Can you share?</p>
<p>“I am confused regarding your underlying motivation”</p>
<p>To move scarce college money from the wealthy to those more in need. Nothing more.</p>
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<p>I know plenty of middle class families that will spend $2500 on a family vacation each year. Or they’ll buy a new car every 3-5 years. Or they’ll spend that much on a new surround-sound home theater system. Or …</p>
<p>Of course, everybody would like to save $2500 on college tuition so that they can spend that money on something else. My point is that not getting a $2500 merit award is NOT ENOUGH by itself to prevent a middle class income student (even one with a family income of a mere $50K) from attending college. All it takes is for the family to be a bit more careful and put off some big, but not mandatory, purchases for a while.</p>
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<p>Yes, I have some idea: When my D graduates next spring from a directional state U, she will have about $18K of Stafford loans. She would have had more Staffords, but we’ve been turning down the unsubsidized portion whenever we could simply afford to, which was most of the time. We will have taken out no PLUS loans, but we will have refinanced the house once (with a lower interest rate to sweeten the deal) where we took out some equity to cover some house related things in addition to a small portion of my D’s college expenses. And I know that we’re really lucky for a family making $75K a year.</p>
<p>Now do you have any idea how much a poor student and his family will have in debt when he graduates from a directional state U with or without a $2500 merit award?</p>
<p>I ask because the genuinely poor student at a public institution like mine (we are talking about a measly $2500 merit award remember), is going to graduate with much more debt than his middle class classmates in spite of his Pell grants.</p>
<p>And no $50K+ private is going to tempt a middle class student with a merit award of only $2500/year unless there’s a whole lot of need-based grant aid in addition to that tiny bit of merit.</p>
<p>Aglages: asked:
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<p>Guessing somewhere in the $80-100K category for parents. Of course, that number may vary by region/public or private and how many years it takes to graduate.</p>
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<p>In most states, a family making $60K should be able to afford the in-state publics with the help of Stafford loans. Since most publics have very small endowments and have little or no * institutional * money available for grant based aid even for the poorest of the poor students, why should a family making even a modest $60K expect the institution to provide them with institutional <em>need</em> based grants? If the college itself is relatively speaking poor–i.e. has a very small endowment per student figure—then I think it might be prudent to not award merit based aid at all.</p>
<p>Now, publics like UIUC or W&M that have very large endowments or privates ought to (but many often don’t) provide some serious institutional grant aid to families making between $60K and $75K since their in-state COA is around $23K, but a typical EFC for a family of four making $75K with one kid in college is about $10K or $12K. But is (BIG) merit for a very few outstanding students really the answer? Is (sort of big) merit for the top 10% of the admitted students any better? Or are the better ways of convincing these schools to meet the financial ** need ** of all students with incomes of $60K to $75K?</p>
<p>And then there are that handful of schools with ENORMOUS Trillion dollar plus endowments like HYP. And they don’t need to bribe anybody to come to them. So going to need-based only aid while at the same time re-writing all the rules the rest of the colleges live by and defining family EFC in such a way that even families with incomes of up to $180K can reasonably expect to be determined to “have need” might as well go with need-only aid. As I said in an earlier post, if my kid hit the jackpot and got into Harvard, we’d only pay $7500 per year, even though our FAFSA says our EFC is $12K</p>
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<p>I don’t agree that merit aid at College A with a high required GPA (think 3.5) that can be lost after one year is automatically better than no need based aid at all: An unrealistically high GPA requirement adds significant stress to the college student; it can cause him to avoid challenging himself with exploring something new and different; it does cause grade-grubbing behavior sometimes to the point of arguing with the teacher about every point that’s taken off of every (minor) quiz as well as the tests. And if the kid does lose a necessary major merit award that is not replaced with grant aid, he not only may feel like a failure because he only earned a 3.35, but he is now faced with the difficult decision of taking out massive additional loans (if he can) for three years to stay at the original college (where he’s made friends and has learned the ropes) or going through the difficult and painful process of transferring and having to play the whole “Will I get enough money?” game again – this time with the significant disadvantage of not being a first time freshman applicant. If he’d gotten no merit aid at College A to begin with, it would have been easier to turn the college down and opt for a different place that is more affordable.</p>
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Define afford. In my state ¶ both PSU and Pitt are about $27K including room & board. Minus $5500 for Stafford loans and the cost is still $21K which is a third of a $60K middle class family’s income BEFORE taxes. Over $80K (plus interest) worth of debt for the parents alone at the end of 4 years. Would $2500 help this family? Absolutely. Would they select a different college because of $2500. Probably not. Are they receiving Pell grants, or State grants or need based FA? No. Can they refinance their homes (perhaps for a third time)? Perhaps. Does it magically make the debt disappear? No. Of course maybe in YOUR state all the undergrads graduate from the state schools in four years and $60K families just write a check every year for $20K to cover college.</p>
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If he can? He can’t without a cosigner. He is not facing additional loans, his middle class parents are facing additional loans. The fact that they saved SOME money before he lost his grant is a real savings that I would rather have than not. How much merit money are we talking about for the average student at State U? According to another post about $2500 per year? A student (and his middle class family) is better off not receiving that “aid” because he might be stressed and lose the aid eventually? Not in my world.</p>
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Enlighten me. How much debt will a 0 EFC student AND his family have when he graduates from a directional state U with or without a $2500 merit award? How much debt can they assume? $80K for the family over 4 years plus another $20K for the student? I am very doubtful that the student can qualify for much more than $30K without a cosigner. How much can a 0 EFC family borrow? How much do they NEED to borrow after receiving NEED based aid?</p>
<p>A very dear friend of mine who hit some really hard times a few years ago easily has a zero EFC. Her daughter is $80K in debt after graduating from Pitt with major in Philosophy. She has the maximum amount of federal loans permissable, and some high interest private ones. Some are co signed by other family members, so I guess she could default on them and let those members get chased by the lenders. But surprisingly, she got some high interest loans on her own signature. They have been the most aggressive about getting their payment. not surprisingly. She is thinking of going back to school to defer at least some of the loans, getting a more marketable degree, waiting out this slump in the economy, and maybe paying off some of those high interest loans with what she might be able to borrow at a lower interest for grad school. According to her, she is not unusual in her predicament and my older sons’ stories about friends and acquaintances of theirs have the same sad tune. </p>
<p>Her sister is now struggling with a $12K gap as her best bet for a school that has a BMusic program. She wants to go into voice performance–opera. Her top choices declined her or waitlisted her and the two schools that offer a good program in the subject gapped her, one badly. In her case, the local community college/state school does not have what she wants and needs to take the next steps. That $12K gap is not insurmountable to middle class families but for her, it’s a big problem. A $50K+ school even with all of the federal subsidies still means more than $10K a year in loans within her aid package. The $12K would be on top of that. Plus her economically deprived area has no jobs. The positions that used to go to college/high school kids are snapped up by adults. Her mother is delighted and grateful to get a job as a cashier at the public pool, for instance, which around here is a position that goes to high school college kids–my son at 16 did that last year. </p>
<p>Somehow these kids are getting these loans. Sometimes they will take the signature of a non credit worthy parent, or the kid gets another relative to sign. Sometimes they give the loans to the kids. The rates are usurious and would be difficult for most adults with a middle class income to wrestle. Plus they were accumulating while the student was in school. I think many kids default on them.</p>
<p>Most middle class families have a local state u or nearby and can somehow get the kid a car. It seems that when I go back to the midwest ewhere I used to live and where most of the families earn around $100-150K a year, the ones we know from our old hangouts, have gotten cars for their kids already. Staying at home and commuting to college along with a part time job makes it affordable to these folks, Then there is the additional availability of the Staffords. A $20K debt for college these days is not at all unusual. That’s how many middle class families are doing it.</p>
<p>And we could have done the same. There are CUNYs around here that have reasonable tuition. And I could drive my kids (who don’t have cars except the oldest who works) to the train or bus that could take them there and pick them up again. </p>
<p>$2500 is a nice chunk of change off the state costs. More than a 10% discount off of our major NY universities. My second one got a $3500 award that he lost after his first year at a SUNY, but made up for it by moving into the abundant and cheap housing in the area. The room and board is high for NE schools with averages running into $9-10K a year if University resources are used. Most can do better on the local economy as my son did. </p>
<p>Also $2500 can be the deal breaker between two very similar schools that may have the kid wavering. Dickinson and Gettysburg are a good example. A small merit sweetener. a deal to get the cheapest dorm accomodations can be one of the few deals a middle class family who qualifies for no financial aid is going to get from private schools in that category. It made the decision for friends of ours. As the dad said to me, “$1000 is still not amount for me to ignore. And it’s really X4.” So all things, equal, why not pick Dickinson over Muhlenburg, Gettysburg and F&M especially when a couple of other small deals can be struck.</p>
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That $2500 merit award is $10000 over the course of the college education. It does matter.</p>
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Yep. In the world outside of the super-elite schools, the $2500 is not insignificant. It wouldn’t keeep a child out of college altogether, but it might keep a bunch out of THAT particular college, if that college came to be viewed as not generous and not really wanting that group of kids. For the college’s bottom line, I think that could really hurt.</p>
<p>I only had time to read the first 6 pages of this thread,but felt compelled to respond now. I hope that I did not miss some important points.
As I see it, we must be a really rare situation where D received both need and merit based aid. She also had athletic offers if she would have chosen them. I will say that it was a little insulting to assume that “most” needs based students are shortchanged in high school from low income areas. It is probably more due to the family life that the student experiences, and if that family is crime and drug prone, the aspiring good student may have too much on his plate to parent his siblings and ''parents" alike. Not all low income areas are ghettos. Rural life may not make you rich,but it can and does provide good values and the experience of hard work for tangible and intangible reward.
If a college is going to give merit based money,that college is hoping that a graduate will be grateful upon achieving success in life and contribute to the alumni fund to help fund the merit-based aid in the future. A merit student is defined by hard work and it would also follow that the graduation rates and success would then follow. It also seems to me that the merit scholar would be less likely to transfer to another school. That makes a good business model to recruit additional assets for more merit based aid,does it not?</p>
<p>We’ll have three in college at once. $2500/yr times three is 7500/yr. That’s significant. 7500 x 4 years is thirty thousand dollars. Maybe there’s somebody somewhere for whom that’s not a lot of money, but for most people it is.</p>
<p>And, yes, middle class and wealthier families do take $2500 vacations, but sometimes, like in our case, the vacations go out the window when the kids go to college. It took me hours of scrounging to make the arrangements so that all of us could go to an old friend’s daughter’s wedding last week. Full book price would have been about $2500. That amount would have made a nice dent in the first installment of my son’s college bill. So if we did not get those frequent flyers sorted out and a cheap, cheap hotel icnluding breakfast, really cheap rental car, and the host family feeding us the rest of the meals, we just would not have been able to afford to go. Even the $500 it cost is going to be tough for us to pay off next month. So $2500 is a lot for me, even though it is about 1% of our income. For us to have that kind of money free, clear and sitting there is not easy. We were overjoyed when we found out that the outside scholarship S got freshman year was increased to about that amount. His research grant is not quite that amount, and his on campus job will come out to be about that amount. It all adds up. So all other things equal, the $2500 could make a difference in our family.</p>
<p>Slumlord, I sorry if it sounded like I was disparaging financial aid kids. Both my husband and I went to college on a lot of financial aid. I deliberately mentioned in my posts that merit and financial aid are not mutually exclusive. Many kids get merit awards, then the aid is loaded on top of that to meet need. IF the award exceeds need, then they don’t get the financial aid but they keep the excess. Happens a lot. Also many more kids get merit aid that is within need. HPY and other schools that do not give exclusively merit money have a number of prestigious scholarships that do go to the best students who qualify for need. </p>
<p>However, the statistics are clear that overall, economic status and academic performance are closely linked. That is not to say that there are not high performing kids who come from families that don’t have much money. I think CC shows us that there are a lot of these kids, really to a point where folks get a distorted impression that loads, and loads of poor kids are getting free rides to Harvard. It does not work that way at all. Anyone who looks at the Pell grant populations of even the most generous schools will see that the “poor” are underrepresented at colleges. </p>
<p>Also, there are many niches within those who just don’t have much money. I have many friends who are in that category, some by choice, who have raised their kids to be academically qualified for the best schools. That small niche represents a lot of those kids getting great scholarships to great schools. A homeschooling family we know who really don’t have much in the way of assets sent both of their daughters to school on full rides, one to Harvard, one to Pitt. The lack of income/assets did not in anyway cause a lack in education for those kids.</p>
<p>That just is not the case for the vast majority of those families who are struggling economic. Such families are overrepresented in the crime, abuse, unemployment, illness statistics.</p>
<p>Not being a policy wonk, I searched for arguments by “experts” regarding merit aid. I found several articles via this Google search
merit aid site:<a href="http://www.highereducation.org%5B/code%5Dthat">www.highereducation.org
that</a> are largely against merit aid, certainly against replacing state-funded need-based aid with state-funded merit-based aid. You might like to read “The Dark Side of Merit Aid”. Here is a quote from another article:</p>
<p>Cracks in the Education Pipeline: A Business Leaders Guide to Higher Education Reform</p>
<p><a href=“สล็อตเว็บตรง FAFA365 มาตรฐานเว็บตรงสล็อต แตกง่ายกว่าเดิม 3 เท่า”>สล็อตเว็บตรง FAFA365 มาตรฐานเว็บตรงสล็อต แตกง่ายกว่าเดิม 3 เท่า;
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