Nonpretentious, Liberal LAC's

bigp9998
Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:02:10 +0000

Quote:
A $2,220 increase may not seem like a lot when viewed against the $44,330 already paid for a Middlebury education, but think about it this way: The 2006 median household income was $46,326. The tuition for one year of Middlebury now exceeds the total income of over 50% of the households in the US. Though Middlebury was never cheap to begin with, increasing the tuition so dramatically is simply closing the door to that many more students who come from families where a 5.25 percent increase makes a difference.

Middlebury prides itself on its “diversity,” after all, 30 percent of the class of 2010 were minorities or international students and 42 percent of students receive financial aid. But if you look at the average aid package ($26,732) that means that the average student on financial aid can still pay $17,598. No family making under $50,000 can afford to put this much money toward a college education. So a very generous estimation would be that 20 percent of the student body comes from that 50 percent of the country who makes an average living. Where does this put Middlebury? Not in a diverse situation, that’s for sure. Why are we moving toward more elitism? The income gap is diverging and every time Middlebury raises its tuition it is excluding another fraction of the population that just can’t work out paying an extra thousand dollars or so. We need to ask ourselves, what the value of an institution like Middlebury is when it is educating and enabling only the children of the upper class - these kids were already guaranteed some level of security and success anyway."



Sorry, but what does that have to do with the Middlebury student body being “icky”?