@PurpleTitan You could go to school for far cheaper than $260k if you don’t go to an Ivy. The premium over that of a state school is very much a luxury. Pretending that it’s “Ivy or do nothing” is like saying “buy a Ferrari or go without a car.”
Ivy-caliber education is probably better, but it’s a luxury all the same. Stupid to pay for it if you don’t have money, stupid to say that it’s worth $260k to people who don’t have that kind of money because it’s a false comparison. It isn’t worth anywhere close to $260k to them.
I know a lot of people who, out of monetary concerns, chose the cheaper school option (with excellent scholarships that include a substantial refund) while having a pretty good deal from Ivy-caliber schools. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario, I know for a fact that an instant sum of money like $20k (over four years) can be more valuable to less wealthy people than some abstract notion of “top notch education” whose added value is a topic in and of itself.
But now you’re moving the goalposts in changing it from a full ride at an Ivy to a “pretty good deal” from Ivy-caliber schools.
There aren’t significantly cheaper school options than getting an Ivy full ride as in the original article. Yes it’s a luxury, but a full ride is essentially a free luxury.
And where is this hypothetical instant sum of $20k supposed ot appear from anyway?
@NeoDymium, the lifetime earnings bump for a lower-SES kid attending a private elite instead of a regular state school could far outweigh the price differential (which, note, said lower-SES kid doesn’t even have to pay).
When I say “pretty good deal” I mean something in the range of 0-$10k a year, which in a relative term is pretty close to zero.
My point is that it’s not actually worth $260k in terms of value added. Yes, all else held equal, most would take a full ride to an Ivy without question despite any downsides I mentioned. But when you say “they got $260k worth of aid and they’re STILL complaining?!?!?!?” then that is a pretty false comparison because there is a very substantial difference between a waiver for a luxury that is worth $260k, and $260k cash in hand.
Scholarship money in excess of direct costs. In lower-COL environments, it’s enough to actually use for purposes outside of just being your living wage.
If you’re talking about full-ride State U vs Ivy, then yes, the Ivy is better. If you’re talking about full-pay for both options, the Ivy is pretty likely to be worse. Given the full-ride option is what we’re talking about, I don’t really disagree with your post here. However, you miss the point, and I will repeat it:
Don’t have time to read through 11 pages, but my somewhat related anecdote:
My son had FA packages at Northwestern and Amherst that would have put his cost of attendance at about $7,000/yr. He chose Michigan State, which paid him about $3,000 after income taxes on his scholarship money.
I am certain that cost paid a major factor in his decision - and it was entirely his decision. I thought $20k in student loan debt and 4 years of sacrifice from his family (mom, dad, 4 younger siblings) was worth it.
I now see the point you were trying to make that it’s not worth $260k more than a cheaper college education. That point was quite easy to lose when you compared the value of a great education to that of a joy ride on a yacht.
I don’t think it’s stupid to say a free education is worth whatever the price tag for that education would be. Regardless if it was free, plenty of people are paying that price tag and many more would pay the full price if they could only be admitted. I think a compromise here is that it’s not necessary for someone to say that their full ride at an Ivy is worth twice as much as the full ride at in-state U.
I’ll grant you that some may choose a package that includes a slight profit on their education via extra scholarships, tuition waivers, etc over a free ride at an Ivy. I haven’t ever come across a case like that but I wouldn’t doubt that it happens.
They’re both luxuries, Ivy education and a ride on a yacht. It’s a false dichotomy to compare Ivy vs. nothing as if that’s a likely possibility. It usually isn’t.
What if the price tag were $100 trillion? Would you still say so?
For the wealthy, it’s a luxury they can easily afford. For the middle-range individuals without financial aid, it’s a luxury they really cannot afford, though they might buy it because most people are bad with finances. For the poorer, the kinds of people who do get financial aid, it’s one of those things that they aren’t going to buy at that price.
People pay for $200k yacht cruises and for Ferraris too.
The best you can really say is that the Ivy full-ride is worth more than the State U full-ride. Like with cars, the sticker price isn’t actually real (unless you are wealthy enough for it not to matter at all) and the reality of sticker price + financial aid is a weird form of price discrimination that gives discounts to the poorer students. Attendance is no more worth the sticker price than a car is worth whatever sticker price the dealer puts on it. At the same time, price being held equal, I don’t think too many people would say State U > Ivy.
As long as you’re so convinced of this that you back it up with hyperbolic what if’s like $100 trillion tuition, I see no real benefit in continuing down this road further.
@OldFashioned1 - what do you mean by “study pre med”? Premed is not a major- it’s a series of required courses to take for students applying to medical school. A student could study Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations and still complete pre-med requirements.
I will agree that we are starting to go in circles and there’s far too much in the way of semantic arguments (rather than content-based ones) for this to go anywhere.
However, my response was quite clearly to the following statement:
Which would be a ridiculous line of argument for $100 trillion tuition plus discount.
The problem is you took my quote out of context by eliminating the part about this referring to a tuition that is not only fair but one that many would love the chance to pay. Yes, any mention of $100 trillion is ridiculous.
When I attended my fortieth reunion at a very well-known LAC a few years ago, we played a similar sort of misery poker, sharing stories of shoplifting textbooks (the fact that a large number of these felons later became successful attorneys only made this aspect of the storytelling all the more appalling), subsisting on government-issued cheese (“Wait, you had real cheese?”), and more than one holiday spent alone on campus.
Yet, to a man (it was an all-male college in those days), we would do it all again - in a heartbeat. Our world, and our understanding of it, expanded so much and at such a rapid pace that it is impossible, looking back on it, to put a price tag on what was happening to us despite the private desperation we were feeling.
Networking? Not that much. At least, not if by that, you mean getting jobs or recommendations from a classmate’s rich parents; that’s an alien concept to me. I actually don’t think that having a majority of classmates from super rich households represents much value-added to the educational experience. The kids who had he biggest influence on me were other first gens, and a handful of brilliant, middle-class kids. The kids of school teachers, CPAs, and middle-management execs had no more pocket money than the “poor” kids; and, this probably would have been true no matter where we went to college.
Also, (speaking as someone who did some of this in college) scrounging for food and having to store some for later hones your value-seeking and relative-value instincts that may be useful on the trading floor (I could take a sugar-crusted blueberry muffin or a banana; the muffin tastes better, but if I don’t stay up late and eat it, it will be on bad shape by the morning in a warm heated room while the banana will keep better).
@OldFashioned1 , my son is on an Engineering track. Brand name is apparently almost irrelevant in Engineering from what I’ve read, although some will say that “better” schools get more attention from recruiters. I thought Northwestern was worth the investment because of possible internships/summer jobs in Chicago, being a smaller, elite school, etc. We live in suburban Toledo, OH. Northwestern or Amherst seems like it might be more of a gateway to somewhere else - Lansing and Toledo are pretty similar. His dreams aren’t necessarily my dreams, however, just as my parents’ dreams for me were not mine.
As related to the article that is the subject of the OP, he would have been scraping together every penny to afford Northwestern or Amherst.
To me this speaks both to and against the Ivy experience-on the one hand being around brilliant peers raises your game, and the highest concentration of brilliant peers is probably going to be at the ivies. On the other hand, it wasn’t the money that mattered, suggesting that finding a brilliant pocket of peers anywhere is going to be a good thing.
I heard this yesterday: “Talent gives you mobility”. I think it was from the show The Raiders of the Lost Art, and it was in reference to Gustav Klimpt. I guess the question then becomes how much mobility does an Ivy degree give you?
Neither one is that good for you-the banana is mostly sugar and starch, with a minimal amount of potassium. It could be argued that the blueberries in the muffin are doing you as much good.
Working on the trading floor isn’t exactly good for your health in the first place. Especially if those fabled 90+ hour weeks in a high-stress environment are the norm.
Smart people can be found anywhere, as there are any number of reasons why they could choose one school over another. Price is one reason, family could be another, and there are plenty of others. Wealth is certainly more concentrated in elite schools, if that’s what you’re after. They also have a higher bar for admission, which does allow them to raise the bar in the classes they teach. Though I’ve also seen that the better students can usually more than make up for the lower bar of their classes by taking more, taking higher level classes, and by going into more depth in other ways. It really makes it quite difficult to assess what is and isn’t better about Ivy-caliber schools.