<p>Does this mean, 80% of UC accepted transfers are transfers from community college? It doesn’t mean UCs take 80% of students who apply to transfer from community college, I don’t think.</p>
<p>In my area, savvy parents, especially savvy Asian parents, whose children didn’t get accepted to top UCs have the kids go to community college instead, with the idea of transferring to their preferred UC. This strategy succeeds if the students work hard, and in any case it saves a bundle of money.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of even savvier private school parents having their kid graduate a year early, attend a community college, and then apply as a transfer to a UC. The family saves a year’s private school tuition, and the student starts college with their agemates. Downside is obviously losing out on the senior year experience.</p>
<p>“These markets are inelastic because demand does not relate to price. But what I find fascinating as well is that these markets became inelastic as soon as, and likely caused by, programs that were instituted to help people afford them!”</p>
<p>1) The inelasticity of demand will continue as long as parents perceive that the added costs of attending a private university such as USC are exceeded by the added benefits. Places like USC have tremendous pricing power. I should be so lucky!</p>
<p>2) God help me and save me from programs that are supposed to “help” people. How often the unintended consequences rear their ugly heads!</p>
<p>Westerndad, the day you take an elderly parent in to see a Dr. who recommends an MRI, or who wants a stress test performed on a terminally ill patient, or who thinks that replacing a hip is medically advised on someone with advanced dementia is the day you realize that even god cannot help save you from these programs.</p>
<p>Listening with a stethescope costs a couple of dollars in Dr time and yields zero in reumbursments. Performing a CT scan or an MRI-- now you’re talking.</p>
<p>Western dad. I agree. The issue with programs that are supposed to “help” me is that we always see ourselves in the wrong position and therefore have the wrong expectations from that situation. More people are expected to be helpers than get helped. It is ALWAYS taking from someone else. People are just always stunned to find out it was “them” who was the target of the taking, not the giving.</p>
<p>The currently proposed future tax scheme is the same thing. Everyone just adores it because it will only cost 1% of the population anything. Right. This is exactly how California got into the situation it is in right now. 10% sales tax! Chicago is no different! High cost of living? Absolutely. Legislature which wants to raise income taxes? Absolutely! All to pay for these fabulous entitlement programs.</p>
<p>“Teachers are underpaid!” people. UAW workers deserve to be paid whether they are working or not. You have to pay for my doctor’s visit, buddy. Because the malpractice insurance is so darn high we’ve only got like 3 OBGYN’s left in the state. But, no tort reform.</p>
<p>Look, as long as I think you are going to pay for me, MY taxes are going to go up.</p>
<p>How about this. IF the family in the article wasn’t taxed at such a high rate, in order to meet these entitlements, they would be able to pay OUT OF Pocket. Thus, choosing who to subsidize. But, no. More entitlements is the direction we are heading right now. So, if you think the middle class can’t afford college? Soon they will not be able to afford shoes.</p>
<p>We assumed from the time that the kids were small that we would get no FA or scholarships, having been through the zero-EFC-and-gapped route ourselves. When we assumed the worst case, having good things happen later made them all the sweeter.</p>
<p>If we tell our kids they can choose their college without regard to finances, then we’d better have a plan for making it happen before making that promise. As we have all learned in recent months, though, even having a financially responsible plan doesn’t mean we’re protected from disaster.</p>
<p>I know a lot of parents who thought their kids would be shoo-ins for big merit $$ and FA. I tried to warn them…but magical thinking is alive and well, and not just in teenagers.</p>
<p>epiphany wrote:
“I think Post 63 is being overly harsh on garland & son. I don’t know if “respect” is the operative word here. JMO.”</p>
<p>My post was not meant to be harsh, just as I’m sure that garland’s many posts about living below their means so that they could provide the best educations available aren’t intended to criticize others who choose to live in a nice house or send their kids to private school. I would, however, expect the children raised in such a modest environment to have an especially great appreciation for what has been given them. To me, and yes, this is just my opinion, it is disrespectful to your parents to not finish an expensive education that was gifted to them at great cost. JMO.</p>
<p>My problem with garland’s model is that in reality, most kids raised in a lower-economic lifestyle will NOT do as well as those raised with higher socio-economic peer groups. I think the statistics bear this out.</p>
<p>While I agree with most of what you said, I have limited optimism that the average person would have saved the additional in-pocket cash for college consumption. That’s not an endorsement of higher taxes, it’s an indictment of a spend everything now society.</p>
<p>Furthermore, given higher education’s indifference to the actual costs of things, I suspect that they’d just bump COA up to the $75K range. Until there is a marked drop in demand, colleges have no incentive to compete on price. As long as Harvard gets 22,000 apps for 1,600 slots or UCLA gets 50,000 for 10,000, or Michigan with 30,000 and 9,000 prices will go up. The amazing thing is that any College of Really Awful Professors can ask and get as much as the big dogs.</p>
It sounded pretty harsh. I don’t think you know whether garland’s child appreciated it or not. Only Garland can know whether it was disrespectful and what kind of a sacrifice it was. I think you brought it up only to try and prove a point. I think Garland was talking about her philosphy in general, and not criticizing anybody specifically. Something you chose to do only to make your opinion sound better. I still agree with Garland.</p>
<p>Purpleflurp–if you think that judging personally a young man you don’t know is the same as discussing different philosophies for paying for an education, then we have nothing more to discuss. I’m not in a newspaper complaining about unfairness–I think life has been more than fair to me.</p>
<p>This is the internet. On countless threads on CC, people express opinions based on the information that is given. That is the nature of this medium. You gave information, and I reacted to it. Just like you and many others do on countless other threads. Perhaps you are right and I do not know your son. If you did not want his situation discussed, you should not have posted about him publicly.</p>
<p>UC campuses usually want you to transfer in with a minimum of 60 units.</p>
<p>It isn’t an 80% admissions rate for transfer students, it means that approximately 80% of all the students who apply as a transfer from CC’s get into the UC’s. There is an advantage to applying this route, as opposed to another private college or Cal State University college. Here is comparison of the students who have applied from the CC’s vs. other 4 year schools. It is a huge difference. The data doesn’t transfer well from the table, so go to this link:</p>
<p>Purpleflurp:
No, you do not know Garland’s son. But even if you did, bringing him into this discussion is highly objectionable. What is the relevance of Garland’s son leaving his college for highly personal reasons to the discussion of a CA family’s sense of entitlement?</p>
<p>Purpleflurp-yes, this is the internet. It’s been my good fortune to find CC to be a place where most posters don’t search for personal posts presented in other contexts in order to make personal attacks.</p>
<p>I think the relevance (at least to me) is that Garland had recommended living in less expensive (working class?) area without particulary good schools to save money. Then her son apparently drops out of Ivy close to getting degree. Although I do not like the high pressure at the elite private and even public schools, they are serving the purpose of socializing kids that a degree, and probably a grad degree is a necessity. Go ahead and blast me that not every child is meant for grad school – I think everyone wants it for their own kids.</p>