Inspired by @Hunt’s “Prestigiosity Index”, I’ve come up with a college “Irrational Financial Immolation Index” (IFII).
My modest proposal is to look at the IFII of colleges, which is defined as how desirable they are to posters here on CC to go into crushing debt to enroll in that school. It has nothing to do with quality of education, class size, earnings after graduation, or any of that stuff. The only criterion is how many CC’ers are willing to go into 6-figure debt for a creative writing degree at that school. Extra points for posters who rationalize that the college will help them land an attractive unpaid internship.
IIFI’s are measured in “milli-NYUs”, with 1000 milli-NYUs (or 1 NYU) being the maximum.
Are you trying to say what colleges we’d be willing to take on a ton of debt for? Personally, no college on this planet. However, if I absolutely had to, Stanford and M.I.T.
For a creative writing degree, absolutely not. If I had to choose, then probably Brown. I was thinking about a CS degree when talking about Stanford and M.I.T.
According to listings on http://www.collegedata.com , the ones with student loan debt exceeding $42,000, plus a few others of interest, are:
115782 Ringling College of Art and Design
102753 University of Hartford
71370 University of the Sciences
63978 Full Sail University
54358 Lamar University
51131 DeVry University - Miramar
50600 DeVry University - Seattle
50520 Boston Architectural College
50500 New York School of Interior Deisgn
49928 California Institute of the Arts
49876 Thomas Jefferson University
49157 DeVry University - Chicago
48862 The Citadel
48750 Anna Maria College
48744 Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
47500 DigiPen Institute of Technology
45665 Daniel Webster College
45098 Delaware State University
44603 School of the Art Institute of Chicago
44584 LeTourneau University
44552 Quinnipiac University
44459 Rockford University
44165 Ursinus College
43238 Becker College
43189 Rivier University
43113 College of St. Scholastica
42967 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
42878 College of St. Joseph
42585 Abelene Christian University
42552 Alvernia University
42528 Utica College
42356 Curry College
42313 Wheelock College
42269 Green Mountain College
42196 Saint Anselm College
42153 Pacific Union College
42044 Lawrence Technological University
38628 Fordham University
37694 Boston University
30881 George Washington University
30688 New York University
I noticed the prevalence of arts schools on other high-debt lists. It always makes me cringe when I read threads from posters asking about taking out 6-figure loans for an illustration degree.
What’s wrong with majoring in Creative Writing? Personally, I rather a kid of mine major in that then in some “hot” stem field which may be not hot by the time they graduate in 4 years or totally obsolete in future years because of advancements in technology, etc. I am not at all a fan of pre-professional undergraduate degrees.
If one is majoring in Creative Writing at Stanford (or any other uni/LAC) they take many other courses in many other disciplines to satisfy their GEC.
I’m amazed that people think that what one majors in is the career they will enter after graduating.
I also take issue with this:
"At expensive, elite institutions whose financial aid is need-based, not merit-based, “you basically don’t have the middle class anymore,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, co-author of “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality.” Three-quarters of the students are in the top quartile of income, “and then there are poor students, and almost none in between.”
With an income between $120-$130K/yr my son received $40K/yr in need based grant (no loans) from his top 20 only need based aid given LAC. So his $240K education cost us $80K. Same as what we would have spent to send him to any SUNY.
I don’t know in what world our son would be considered “poor” based on our income and we cannot be the only family in all of the US getting that amount of aid at the need based aid only schools.
"You are not among the “poor” that Armstrong describes, since $120,000 per year is well into the top quartile of income.
But look at the authors quote:
"At expensive, elite institutions whose financial aid is need-based, not merit-based, “you basically don’t have the middle class anymore,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, co-author of “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality.” Three-quarters of the students are in the top quartile of income, “and then there are poor students, and almost none in between.”
Imo, it’s a ridiculous statement given what I know about need based aid at the elite colleges. If my son qualified for a ton of aid, surely those who attend these schools who fall into whatever range is used for middle class these days are getting even more aid than my son got. These schools are not made up of just the top quartile and the poor.
The reality is that many of those schools do not have even a quarter of their students from lower to lower-middle income backgrounds. Look at their Pell grant percentages.
Ok, I looked and if 50% are top 3% or so of income at most of the elite private uni/colleges and somewhere in the teens percentage wide receive Pell - that must mean there are on average about 30% or so who are middle class/upper middle class and receive need based aid.
I just think this whole argument that the elite schools are made of the very rich and the poor with no students from the middle classes is ridiculous.
True – it is more like about half from the top few percent (though a much smaller portion of those from the super-rich) and the other half from everyone else (with a significant bias toward the higher incomes).
So, her statement - that it’s the very rich and the poor who made up the student populations at these schools is, in fact false.
“with a significant bias toward the higher incomes.”
^ Are there stats which show that? What are you considering “higher” incomes? Someone like me - whose son got considerable aid? Or a bunch of people who have incomes around $175K (like the kid’s family in the article - who get aid, but not very much?) I know at my son’s school that the average aid given is $40K/yr.
“Bates awards more than $30 million in grant aid each year, and about half of enrolled students receive financial aid. Individual awards for 2013–14 range from $1,000 to $60,200 — the average financial aid award is $40,683.”
Since you mentioned upthread that your son got about $40,000 in grants (very close to the average aid), that implies that your high income financial situation is pretty close to the average financial situation of financial aid recipients there.