Princeton's Room and Board Surges 19%, Tuition Holds Steady

Parents Forum
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<p>Princeton financial aid DOES cover room and board. I’ll admit that 19% is a whopping increase, but the decision was made this year to increase financial aid for juniors and seniors next year so that the higher priced eating club food plan will be subsidized. Those juniors and seniors on financial aid who do not elect eating clubs will get a similar increase for “independent” eating - cooperatives, etc. Here’s a link from the Daily Prince.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/01/22/news/17151.shtml[/url]”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/01/22/news/17151.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>This reminds me of the way my company kisses up the important clients; they can bet on generous donations from them in return. Smart investment!</p>

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<p>The Christian Science Monitor got it wrong, which reinforces the point that the only thing Princeton accomplishes by keeping tuition unchanged while increasing room and board an outsized amount is to generate a little undeserved good publicity. </p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0123/p03s01-nbgn.html[/url]”>http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0123/p03s01-nbgn.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Princeton aid is calculated based on how much students can afford, not on how much Princeton can provide. The amount that poorer students can afford to pay will not change with this increase. All this serves to do is make the upper eschelon, those who wouldn’t need aid even with the increase, pay more. It’s essentially a robin hoodesque move that i applaud and that some of you should look into a little more before questioning.</p>

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<p>raging:</p>

<p>Let’s try a simple example: P’Ton raises its tution, say, $4,000 for next year. For those students who are on full pay (slightly less than half the students), their costs go up by $4,000. For those on finaid, their iincrease is zero since their aid would increase to cover the increased tuition. So, by not raising tuition, P’ton is advantaging the already advantaged.</p>

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<p>I’m out of breath… can’t keep beating this dead horse. What I find most annoying is that this type of bs reminds me of government bragging about holding the line on taxes, deciding not to raise taxes of a certain category ex debt service, patting themselves on the back about not raising taxes, and then I look at my tax bill and it is still 10% higher than last year. </p>

<p>bluebayou, the quote that you provided above states that Princeton’s move was:</p>

<p>“…popular with students and generating lots of good press”</p>

<p>Why should they generate lots of good press by raising total cost of attendence by around 4% ? What’s the big deal? Only if “the press” gets it wrong like the CSM did.</p>

<p>Also, I am so dense I had trouble figuring out who you think are “the advantaged.” I think a person attending Princeton on a $0 EFC scholarship is pretty advantaged.</p>

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<p>NJRes:</p>

<p>I agree that the good press s/b anything but. However, many jouranalists are statistically-challenged, which is why this is such a brilliant PR move. The college receives national headlines for what is, in fact, a 4% increase in costs. :)</p>

<p>My prior reference to the “advantaged” was a play on President Tilghman’s comment about ED, i.e., P’ton eliminated ED bcos “Early Decision was advantaging those who were already advantaged.” In this case, I meant the ‘advantaged’ to mean ~50% of Princeton students who are full pay – since they received no tuition increase…</p>

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<p>For parents paying the full load at Pton, they are going to pay 4.2% more than last year. Blue…I don’t see that as advantaging the advantaged!</p>

<p>Also, your financial aid numbers showed that they must be giving a lot to the underprivileged to maintain a $30,000 average when the numbers you cite are all well short of that. Point: the bulk of the money is going to the very needy to support a $200,000 commitment.</p>

<p>Finaally you lament the relevance of the Early Admission Game numbers now that the world has changed. You are right the world has changed and Pton with its peer changed it (that is called leadership). ED can only advantage the gameplayers (well off) so credit Pton for making the move. SC up for the change yet?</p>

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<p>again, I refer to the higher ed gurus who are much more knowledgeable than I…</p>

<p>from today’s Inside Higher Ed:</p>

<p>“And while experts on higher education have been reluctant to criticize Princeton’s move, a number make the point that its decision…will most help the wealthiest families.”</p>

<p>btw: if you back out the internationals (average grant in excess of $33k), the average P’ton grant drops to $24k. But, that is the thing with averages. Let’s assume a Frosh class of 1100 kids, of which 600 recieve some finaid and the others 500 are full pay. Also, assume an average grant of $25k = total grant pool of $15M for the class. And, further assume that 100 of finaid group is zero efc, on a full ride. Thus, they utilize 45k x 100 = $4.05M of the grant pool, leaving $10.5M for the other 500 students, or an average of $21k per other finaid student. What does that tell us? Statistically, not much without the income distribution of the student population. But, what is noticeable is that the top 5% income bracket in the US is eligible for grant money from Princeton, starting with the no-loan policy, which mini has pointed out repeatedly. </p>

<p>fwiw: Univ. of Southern Cal does not have ED nor EA, but does have 2 times the number of Pell Grantees, aka low, low income students.</p>

<p>“At a dozen of the wealthiest private colleges — including Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania — Pell Grant recipients make up less than 10 percent of undergraduates, the Chronicle analysis found.”</p>

<p>“At Princeton, the share of Pell Grant recipients among undergraduates increased from 6.5 percent in 1997-98 — the year before the university replaced loans with grants for students whose families made less than $40,000 — to 7.3 percent the following year. The average proportion of Pell Grant recipients at the university has held steady since then at 7.5 percent, among the lowest of all wealthy institutions.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i36/36a00101.htm[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i36/36a00101.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>To be fair, the no-loan policy did and does benefit some very low-income students, though it is also likely (as Brown University discovered) loans are among low-income students’ lesser concerns. But the prime beneficiaries, the majority of the beneficiaries, and the ones they were aiming at were those in the top 5% (but not top 3%) of the population. These are those upper middle class students from suburban public high schools who bring prestige to the U., and more crucially, don’t bring down the prestige was they would if they choose full rides at Vanderbilt or Emory over a measly loan from Princeton. </p>

<p>I still think it is a good thing, but some times (as Bluebayou well points out) the numbers aren’t what they seem. The increase in the percentage receiving so-called “need-based” aid is actually made up to a large extent of aid going to students where the institution is competing with “merit aid” offers. This will become increasingly true as list price for attending continues to rise (as it should.) It will look like the institution is getting more generous if a larger percentage of students receive need-based aid, but (as at my alma mater, looking back 25 years) the opposite can be the case.</p>

<p>“The average proportion of Pell Grant recipients at the university has held steady since then at 7.5 percent, among the lowest of all wealthy institutions.”</p>

<p>And this has occurred as the maximum level for Pell Grants has over the years, slowly risen, so the reality is that the percentage of poor students in those lower categories has actually declined. Again, the numbers aren’t always what they seem.</p>

<p>(It should be noted that H.'s Pell Grant share is likely inflated by the Extension School.)</p>

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<p>Do the Ivy league schools require their low income students to use Pell Grants if they qualify or can the university meet 100% of the student’s need with 0 EFC by using institutional money? In other words, I am asking if the proportion of Pell Grant recipients is an accurate measure of low income students enrolled.</p>

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<p>In a word, yes. The institution uses its own money last. (There are likely to be a very few exceptions with low-income undocumented migrants or some such.)</p>

<p>“Pton has 9+% African American in recently admitted classes which is something SC should shoot for.”</p>

<p>Lower than it was in 1971. The big difference is that in 1971, almost all of them were low-income. Not anymore. (To be fair, H’s are higher than they were in 1971, because their African-American numbers then were much lower than Princeton’s. But the income level difference holds, as it does for Yale, and many other prestige institutions.)</p>

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<p>Mini perhaps you could quote The Chosen more fairly. Specifically, the three chosen schools were virtually lily white up to the mid 60’s and the '71 class was an exception (almost a statistical outlier). Numbers later in the 70s and the 80s were much lower than recent years.</p>

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<p>I think that was a VERY fair quote. Princeton has chosen face diversity (in color) rather than cultural diversity. Now I happen to think that is okay - most white students will never have met ANY upper income minority students before in their lives, so they provide an important lesson. And the few (very few) poor minority students will gain much from being around upper income ones (much as I, a poorer white student, gained immensely from being around ruling class peers).</p>

<p>1971 at Princeton was NOT a statistical outlier (and those responsible for it at Princeton would be extremely offended if you said so), but the result of specific and intense efforts on the part of the school to recruit low-income minorities, an effort that, to this day, they have failed to duplicate. Students in the top 5% (but not 3%) are another story entirely.</p>

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<p>Perhaps the advances our society has made in the last 30 to 40 years are an inconvenient truth for your reasoning. The expansion of the African American middle class is something to celebrate not lament. The point of progress is that The Chosen schools have risen above a terrible legacy to advance higher education to be inclusive of a diverse America. That is a cause for celebration not castigation.</p>

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<p>well, I’m not too worried about it. </p>

<p>Princeton advertises loan-free financial aid anyway, meaning, if you can’t pay that high tuition bill, they will give you grants to pay for it.</p>

<p>Most private schools have a high pricetag, but all the top schools have a lot of money around to help those who can’t pay the sticker price. </p>

<p>For instance, I pay just slightly more at a top private university than the expenses at public 4-year colleges.</p>

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<p>Wealthy families don’t deserve need-based financial aid, unless they have multiple children in college.</p>