Yale Report Finds Colleges Deserve Blame for Higher Education’s Problems

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I found my mind jumping all over the place as I read the Yale report. I think a reason for that is because higher education in the US is such a broad spectrum that can not easily be categorized as one thing (from elite privates, to state flagships, to public and private regionals, to religious institutions, to LACs, to women’s and HBCUs, to community colleges, to for profits, and more). Yet, when people talk about trust in higher education or the problems with higher education, it is said as if it is all one similar thing. In reality, I think often just a small slice is in mind for the conversation and impressions.

It reminds me of when people talk about the problems with college sports. What they often mostly mean is Division I football and basketball, yet they make the statement as if the problems they are talking about genuinely apply to all, or even most college sports.

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I note the Report did in fact reference what is known as the Chetty Study, in Note 30 during the admissions discussions. It is true the Report focuses on what the Study said about how admissions at Ivy Plus institutions observably advantages the children of the wealthiest, but of course the Study is ultimately about how that ends up advantaging the children of the wealthiest when it comes to becoming the next round of wealthiest and more powerful.

I would therefore suggest it is a fair criticism of the Report that it basically cuts off that story at the halfway point. Nominally, this Report is supposed to be about why the public at large is losing faith in these institutions, and I think it is obvious that whole story, not just the first part, is highly relevant to that question.

And I think it is a further fair criticism that the sum of their recommendations may do very little to change any of what the Chetty Study found, indeed some could actually make it worse. A cynical person might suggest that is because the institution does not really want to give up those advantages when it comes to tail end outcomes for graduates, that indeed all that is (reasonably) expected to help the institution continue to become wealthier itself. A wealth trend the Report is also willing to observe, see Note 23 and accompanying text, but then there is no real discussion about actually changing anything relevant to that trend (somewhat more generous aid for a few families and types of graduate students will not in fact meaningfully bend that curve).

OK, so, yes, it is true this is sort of discussing what the Report didn’t do, as opposed to what it did do. But in this specific context, namely the general question they raised and then their indication they are well-aware of the Chetty Study, I think it is quite fair to analyze whether their failure to discuss those things is rather telling about the limits of the institutional changes they are really willing to consider. No matter what that might mean for public perceptions.

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I don’t expect many substantive changes to arise at Yale or other Ivies, including reducing the number of legacy/donor/athlete preferences (they did not actually call for eliminating these). I did find the whole exercise somewhat self important. Most Americans probably don’t spend much time worrying about how things work at Yale. They are much more likely to worry about how they can afford to send their kiddo to the local public U as college costs are unaffordable for many.

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There is an old joke in certain circles that if some controversial issue has become a public concern, but you don’t want to actually do anything about it, you will appoint a “blue-ribbon committee” to investigate the issue.

This did have a bit of that feel to me. Lots of sympathetic understanding of the issue, not a lot of serious, uncomfortable change proposed.

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That was my take away. It’s not actually in their interest to make those changes. Places like Yale have a surfeit of excellent applicants (many wealthy) so they don’t have a real impetus to change what they are doing because it works for them.

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Yeah, at a very high level, I would say their “problem” is that their level of success in their competitive set depends on ever-increasing levels of institutional wealth, and those multigenerational financial plans have implications for many things, including admissions. Overall I think they have been pleased with the results, but they are facing a lot of criticism for it.

But they aren’t likely to do anything to actually make themselves less competitive in future years. They may try some not particularly substantial things to address public perceptions. But even if those things are not very effective, as long as they keep getting the actual results they want, the appearance of trying might be all they need.

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On the “too many assets” issue– y’all raise some great points. BUT– just like our tax system, health care system, etc. no single process is going to account for every nuance that a particular person or family is going to present. But unlike the IRS or your health insurer- at least there’s a professional judgement possibility in place to explain “over the limit” assets re: financial aid.

In a country where a significant percentage of the population couldn’t come up with $1K to fix the car which gets them to work every day (or whatever the USA Today polls indicate) I think a family sitting on the $60K to replace two aging cars problem does not impact a huge number of aid seeking families.

On the wish (or just an observation) that if the “elite” employers would cast a wider net for recruits the problems of “everyone at Harvard wants to work at JP Morgan” issue- I dunno.

JP Morgan has shareholders. Management answers to the shareholders specifically, and to the SEC, other regulators, and “society at large” when relevant. While they can be in the business of “reflecting the communities we operate in” when it comes to banking policies, making sure that they aren’t actively violating legal or ethical codes, etc., I’ll bet that explaining that recruiting costs doubled last year to make sure that the universities of Montana, Iowa, Wyoming, North Dakota, etc. got as much attention as Harvard and Dartmouth– nah. Shareholders not impressed, the government doesn’t care, and the public at large gives a big yawn. Sorry for the run-on sentence.

Companies control recruiting costs. During a boom economy they go up by necessity since it’s harder to meet your targets. During a bust they go down because there’s a line at the door of people who want to work for you The externalities (Covid, Financial Crisis, etc.) are managed as best as they can be– but in my 35+ year recruiting career– the default for these Black Swan events is always to cut the recruiting budget and then evaluate. Which means MORE kids interviewed and hired from Harvard, and a lot less time spent reading transcripts from University of Southern Genovia where you’ve got to get a team up to speed on whether the geology majors are engaged in actively creating models for predicting seismic activity, or whether they are looking at soil and writing senior theses based on tertiary sources.

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In fact I would hazard that to most US families, the sort of complaints/debates that arise in this area can contribute to the public perception problem.

Like, we have sometimes discussed how professional class families in lower cost of living, usually non-coastal, metros may end up with more liquid financial savings, including in the form of 529s if they choose. Otherwise similar professional families in VHCOL metros might end up with more savings in the form of net home equity. There is a sort of ongoing debate about whether it is appropriate to ask the latter to borrow against home equity as a way of accessing those savings.

I don’t want to entirely dismiss that as a reasonable issue to discuss for those specific families, but in fact most US families do not have enough in liquid financial assets OR net home equity for this to be a real practical issue in the aid formulas of a college like Yale. That is the “typical” situation for US families falling below these income levels. And again, families with high net wealth arguing about whether their particular form of net wealth should be considered accessible for college costs may not find a sympathetic audience among families who don’t have ANY form of high net wealth.

Again I know the Report didn’t go into these details, but I do think this is all related to the general high-list-price/high-aid model. In the end, this is all contributing to the “two Americas” view, where there are some wealthy US families talking about college opportunities and costs in a way that comes across as completely alien to most US families.

Of course I also understand why, say, ending this conversation by making Yale entirely tuition-free does not necessarily feel like a satisfactory solution either. Congratulations, wealthy families, your squabbling means you now all get it for free.

But that’s why these perception issues don’t seem likely to go away any time soon.

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Exactly. Truly middle class families who don’t have a lot of savings socked away, or big, expensive houses would get very generous aid from someplace like Yale - if the student can be admitted. It isn’t the Yales of the world that present a problem (financially speaking) for the middle class. For the middle class and lower income families, the bigger problem is likely to be that public colleges are so expensive and have little in the way of need-based aid for middle class families. Unless you are very low income you aren’t going to get much at most public schools.

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This is a large part of why I feel like one of the circumstances in which we can actually add real value around here is helping such families find colleges that might offer enough in need+merit to improve on their in-state options. But even then, you need the numbers for that. Not necessarily Yale numbers, though.

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I agree that the nitpicking about financial aid policies for families with household incomes in the 80th to 90th percentile (roughly $150k-200k/year) is going to engender little sympathy with the general public, as at least 80% of the general public has a household income less than these families. And there are many wonderful colleges that families in that range will likely be able to afford, and if it’s not Yale or Colby or wherever, it’s not a tragedy.

But my issue is twofold:

  1. The financially bad habits engendered by the limitations (expounded upon at length above)

  2. Advertising free tuition for folks at these income levels, and only once you get super granular does one find the catch.

If they didn’t do #2, I wouldn’t care as much about #1. But people hear about #2 and may then make financial plans in order to qualify for that deal. And if their student doesn’t get into one of these institutions with “free” tuition for high-income families, then the family is in an even worse position, and, frankly, it exacerbates the bad financial habits that many in our country have (including our government), which is only going to bite us in the rear further down the road.

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And to keep bringing this back to the public perception problem, some people will then become very vocal about the “donut hole” they think they are experiencing, and even generalize it to a group as broad as “the middle class”.

The truth is if you really looked at what was happening, in most cases they truly did have more ability to pay than the families receiving a lot more aid, even if they then made things harder on themselves. And it would all be moot for families in the lower-middle to middle-middle class anyway.

But people simply hearing about this without getting so far as to look at an NPC for their own family don’t know all those details. They just hear these institutions have become unaffordable for “the middle class”.

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This is part of why my mind struggled so much with the Yale article talking about higher ed perception and affordability. Most people aren’t worried about affording Yale. They are worried about affording State U when they say college is too expensive. We should all be talking more about how to make state schools more inexpensive, and I’d argue tuition free or minimal fee. Discussions of Yale’s massive endowment and high list price/high aid are irrelevant to the biggest cost challenge for American families.

And, at least in my state (CA), part of the perception is that the state has chosen to stop investing in higher ed like it did in the past. And now students are expected to bear those costs.

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Agree 100%.

And in states where the flagship is located in a rural or semi-rural area (which by definition means not commutable from the large population centers) it’s exacerbated by room and board costs (unavoidable). And yes, there are satellite campuses, branches of the former state teachers college systems, etc. And online degrees. But to argue that a kid who wants to major in mechanical engineering (and has the stats) should shift to a degree in K-12 education because the flagship is unaffordable… dunno, strikes me as counter-productive.

There are states where the satellite/state college system is robust, and states where it’s robust for accounting, teaching, mass communications, and “general business”. So the kids in those states who can’t afford the flagship because they can’t afford to dorm and the campus is 100 miles from home– what then???

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Sadly, my state is a good example of one where the “flagship” residential universities can be unaffordable in practice, and the regional system has all sorts of geographic holes (sometimes in general, sometimes for specific majors). And in some ways it has gotten worse.

And yes, I feel like this is a much more serious problem than the Yale stuff, but I also feel like it is likely one of many contributing factors to the “two Americas” narrative, which then sweeps in colleges like Yale as well. Even when they protest that they might well be less expensive for you than your in-state options, if you can’t get admitted, that isn’t doing you a lot of good. And then they reasonably look like just another part of an overall system you can’t access.

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I don’t see how a published standardized test score minimum is going to help. For some, that will just help clarify they are locked out from the beginning. For others, they will get the minimum score . . . and still not get admitted. I don’t see that changing the dynamic.

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We always seem to get in trouble on CC when we start talking about the middle class because so few of us have the same definition. To make things a bit more tangible, here are a few household incomes by percentile (source):

  • $34,000 = 25th percentile
  • $67,500 = 50th percentile
  • $125,000 = 75th percentile

To my mind, lower income would be below the 25th percentile, middle income would be 25th to 75th percentile, and upper income would be above the 75th percentile.

Many families at the 50th percentile and below may qualify for a Pell Grant, and in looking at a variety of states, students who are around the $65k mark or below qualify for free tuition (i.e. the state will then cover what the Pell Grant doesn’t). So for many of those families, the affordability piece comes in for room and board costs, which many of us on CC consider part of the “traditional” college experience, but is a luxury that many families can’t afford.

So then it’s families in 50th-75th percentile that may not qualify right off the bat for free in-state tuition. I have not run the NPCs, but I suspect most middle income in-state students would still be qualifying for some need-based aid (at least if household income is less than $100k), even if tuition isn’t free. That’s a supposition on my part, however.

Additionally, there are states where there is a very generous merit aid opportunity that covers tuition in-state. Whether that’s Georgia’s Hope/Zell Miller scholarships, or Florida’s Bright Futures, or Louisiana’s TOPS scholarships…it can make in-state publics quite affordable with relatively modest academic stats.

That’s obviously not the case everywhere, but I don’t think it’s as universally bad as some might think.

I think there’s nuance here that is being missed. I think there are those who are worried about affording Flagship U. with room & board rather than just affording any State U.

UCLA has in-state tuition & fees of about $16k. Cal State-Los Angeles has in-state tuition & fees of about $7500. Both are public Us in the same city, but one has more prestige and is more than twice as expensive as the other.

I don’t know the details about California’s financial support for students, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t decent financial support for truly middle class families (@Gumbymom can probably provide more info).

Regardless, however, I still agree with this:

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Thanks for sharing this. Pell grants certainly haven’t kept pace with the cost of living and college costs, but families around the 50% of income and sometimes even higher (so plenty of middle income families) can qualify for partial pell grants.

I just ran an SAI estimator for a family of 3, making $67K with $50000 in savings (purposely agressive), and the SAI was around 5500. So this family would quailfy for around $2K in pell grants. (Max Pell is $7,395 for those of SAI -1500.)

My point is that many middle income/middle class families qualify for partial Pell grants, which can also open up some state funding options. Many of these families may also qualify for free/reduced lunch in k-12 which also opens up additional college funding in some states. Over half of K-12 students qualify for free/reduced lunch based on income.

In the big picture, of course I would like states to make college less expensive. But…their education budgets have been hammered. And if I had to choose between relatively more funding for K-12 vs higher ed, I choose K-12. Of course, often the states that don’t invest much in higher ed also don’t prioritize K-12 investment.

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I think one major problem is when a family doesn’t have a suitable four-year college program within commuting distance either.

That then makes a suitable four-year college degree in general a “luxury” they can’t afford.

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For eligible California residents, the following state aid is available.

Cal Grants A and B which can cover tuition and living expenses.

Middle class scholarship provides low-to middle-income undergraduate students, including students pursuing a teaching credential, with a scholarship to attend a University of California (UC), California State University (CSU) or California Community College Bachelor’s degree program. Award amounts vary based on the student’s cost of attendance and all available resources already awarded to the student. Final award amounts are based on number of students eligible for the program statewide and funding allocated by the State Budget.

Blue and Gold Plan for University of California student that covers systemwide tuition and fees for California resident undergraduates with a total family income below $100K.

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The nuance you point out is fine. My primary point was that Yale becoming affordable is not the issue, but elite private school affordability is talked about incessantly. I’m actually mostly fine with a world where everyone can afford state schools and elite private schools have complicated pricing schemes that may price some folks out. Public pressure will make them make some adjustments, but I’d rather have the focus on what matters most in terms of educational opportunity for people and that is not the small sliver of schools with sub 10% admissions rates and modest sized student bodies.

And, to be clear, my view is state school affordability should include discussion of room & board. I believe residential college is an educational experience that should be more widely available. And, as you seem to agree with $16k is way too much for UCLA tuition and fees to cost in my opinion. And $7500 is too much for Cal State LA to cost as well.

Lastly, on the nuance front, when considering middle income ranges, one also has to consider the realities of cost of living in many parts of CA, including where many of the UCs/Cal States are which is way above the standard cost of living in US. Even the federal government makes major salary scale adjustments in those areas to try to get the pay to better match up with the reality of living there. Thus, being at the 75% mark of national income is not quite the same if the family and school are in one of those uber expensive locals.

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