<p>Steve, sorry about the poorly worded post. No more merit scholorships being offered by this well regarded lac. I didn’t mean to say there’s no need based financial aid, and I apologize for giving that impression. There’s no more merit money. You could look up the recent thread here on CC: “Schools known for no merit aid”. This one is a recent addition to that list. Five or six years ago we knew kids who had gotten really nice merit scholarships to this lac, which made the COA reasonable. But without merit scholarships, the cost is, perhaps, not worth it.</p>
<p>Even if the federal government got out of the loan business, do you think Pell grants should stay?</p>
<p>A few things about the building that goes on on college campuses. First, there absolutely is a competition among colleges for students and pressures from families to have better facilities (you even see it here on CC–kids who are choosing schools based on dorms and food, with little regard to the classroom experience, which they can’t easily judge). Second, college buildings have to be renovated or replaced on a regular basis; kids are hard on dorms, science as it is currently practiced bears no relation to how it was done 50 years ago, etc. Third, borrowing money for building has never been cheaper. Fourth, schools sometimes get money from donors earmarked only for certain projects; if you were president of a college and someone came to you wanting to pay for a new performing arts center, would you turn it down?</p>
<p>Catria: No. Institutions are either State or Private. Grants should be provided by the school or the state.</p>
<p>Go to the cheapest school. Do not apply to expansive ones.
However, whatever is done is not going to be effective. College has to be financially sound. So, if they have to cut inbound money, they have to cut outbound money (cut services, sport programs…). Maybe they should anyway…no fansy new buildings, no repairs, let it all run down if that what it takes. They cannot fired profs., so everything else has to be cut…</p>
<p>eastcoascrazy–my point is that these schools that don’t offer merit aid have more than generous “need” aid, even for families that are full pay elsewhere. Their philosophy is generally that all of their students would qualify for merit aid. Like I said, run your numbers through the NPC, you might be surprised what they do offer compared to other schools.</p>
<p>Ok, just ran the NPC for that school. We are full pay at all the schools the kids applied to. The overall cost for this school is about the same as 3 of their schools, just a little bit more than most of them, less than one school. “Given” a scholarship that cuts the price in half, with loan and “self-help” aid brings it in line with the net costs to us as the rest of the schools the kids applied to with automatic merit aid–right in the middle, some were a couple thousand higher, some a couple thousand lower (private schools–not including the couple state schools the kids applied to). So what if they don’t offer merit aid. At this particular school, ALL of the kids would qualify for merit aid, much like they do at Harvard, etc. Again, happy alum make for lower costs for current students.</p>
<p>Steve, I’m not sure why you want to argue about this with me. From my personal perspective, Voldemort University (which shall not be named)took itself out of any consideration for my own family when it cut merit scholarships after a decade or so of competitive campus building. My family is in that sweet spot of too much income to receive financial aid, but not enough to be comfortable paying over $50K per year, per school, especially now, with two in college. I’m merely stating my own feelings upon seeing how much new construction had taken place, what the cost was, and then, a few years later to see that merit scholarships had been cut. Some parents might look at all that new construction and be tickled at the price tag, particularly if they were receiving a lot of financial aid, and not paying full freight. That wasn’t my response.</p>
<p>“Again, happy alum make for lower costs for current students.” - Absolutely so true!!</p>
<p>Or just make fun of politicians when they fail to vote against tuition increases: [The</a> Nick Clegg Apology Song: I’m Sorry (The Autotune Remix) - YouTube](<a href=“The Nick Clegg Apology Song: I'm Sorry (The Autotune Remix) - YouTube”>The Nick Clegg Apology Song: I'm Sorry (The Autotune Remix) - YouTube) I’m guessing none of you have heard of it in the US, but it even charted here. Nick Clegg is just too easy a target :)</p>
<p>eastcoascrazy–I am trying to get you to understand that even though it’s not called “merit aid” they still have aid available for higher income families, more so than at other schools. Did your child apply and did you get a financial aid package from them? If so, did you get zero from them? Families in that “sweet spot” are exactly the families they are trying to help with their policies. Schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. all have a similar policy and don’t offer merit aid either.</p>
<p>Steve, why don’t you read my posts on this thread? I explained the sequence of my personal thought process, and the thought process of my son. He did not apply after two visits, because the student body was, in his viewpoint, too overwhelmingly white, among other things.</p>
<p>And at the time he was looking at the college in question, they WERE giving merit scholarships. The college stopped offering merit scholarships AFTER my son was already happily enrolled in a different university.</p>
<p>I’m not even sure we are writing about the same college, quite frankly. You seem to be referring to an ivy or near ivy level college. The college I am referring to, while well respected, is not at that level. </p>
<p>One last time, my son’s decision to not apply was based on fit, not on financial considerations. I personally was put off by the cost plus the extensive new construction, but that was just my own reaction, and had nothing to do with his decision not to apply. The subsequent loss of merit scholarships plus the very high tuition does affect my view of the school, and I would have discouraged S2 from applying, but he was not even remotely interested in a LAC that small. </p>
<p>And now we return to our regular programming. :)</p>
<p>Ridiculous. Vote with your feet if you are affluent and resent paying more for the same product than others. We know plenty of people who have done just this. We are weary of the social engineering and discrimination endemic in higher education.</p>
<p>For years tuition and total CoA has risen far faster than the rate of inflation. Same is true for health care costs. And the reasons are the same.</p>
<p>College admins know that their customers can get easy credit for something they desperately desire, so they can charge outrageous prices. While the medical care industry mines the insurance/paid-for paradigm and does the same. In both cases, somebody else appears to be paying. </p>
<p>Great Britain and Canada spends a total of 8% of their GDP on the full medical services it provides to ALL of its citizens. While the U.S. spends 18% of its GDP to provide rationed medical services to only about 60% of its citizens. </p>
<p>In the U.S., many powerful groups have their own “rice-bowl”, and they would rather others suffer greatly than give it up.</p>
<p>Neither of those would work.</p>
<p>The only way for tuition to decline is to have a massive decrease in demand or for the federal government to pull out of lending and privatize all student loans. I don’t see either happening soon so tuition is going to increase for quite some time. I’d hedge my bets on the decrease in demand happening before the government withdraws.</p>
<p>In my book, “Achieve Financial Freedom:Big Time” I note that you can use prepaid tuition plans to guarantee fixed tuition and required fees for four years.
Although this normally applies to state schools since they are set up by the states, there is a private version of the prepaid tuition plan that has several hundred top schools who are subscribers. For more information on these private prepaid plans go to: <a href=“https://www.privatecollege529.com/OFI529/[/url]”>https://www.privatecollege529.com/OFI529/</a></p>
<p>eastcoascrazy–I did read your posts and you very clearly said in your first post here that he declined to apply because of too many new buildings leading to the high costs and lack of merit aid. I’m just trying to clarify for OTHER posters, and you, that even though it’s not called merit aid, it amounts to the same thing, just includes MORE kids. Also note that very few colleges build buildings out of their normal operating budgets. Most colleges build new buildings out of donations to the school with the express purpose of building that building. Like I said, happy alum makes for cheep college for future generations!</p>
<p>College is a well run business.</p>
<p>Actually. a lot of colleges take out construction loans to build new buildings. The rate you get on the construction loan has to do with the ratio of how much you’re borrowing relative to the size of your endowment. This is thought to determine your ability to repay the loan. Because of this, when parents ask “why does a school with a 1 billion dollar endowment need to hang onto all that money and why don’t they just use it all for financial aid,” the answer is “because then they wouldn’t be allowed to borrow any more money to build any more buildings.” Schools will not spend down their endowments to distribute financial aid as long as this is the formula used to indicate loan worthiness for new construction.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably close to 9% or 10% of GDP for the UK and Canada, and somewhat more than 60% of the US population is covered. That is still a very unfavorable comparison for the US.</p>
<p>However, what may be more striking is that each of the above country’s government spends about 7% of GDP on medical insurance, but the UK and Canada governments cover their entire populations, while the US government covers only about a fourth of the US population. The much larger additional private spending on medical insurance is a huge hidden tax on individuals and businesses in the US.</p>