10 ms·

> I don't really care if universities hire hedge managers to manage their endowment, but it's absurd that schools with multibillion dollar endowments still char

• jqgatsby 11y ago
  I walked out of MIT with $100K in student loans, because I had the combination of 'parents who make too much money' and 'parents who had five kids and did not adequately save for their children's education'. I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair? I was apparently rich by association, and it was pretty upsetting to see kids who were ostensibly poorer than I was get a substantially easier start in life.
  • jonknee 11y ago
    > I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair? I was apparently rich by association, and it was pretty upsetting to see kids who were ostensibly poorer than I was get a substantially easier start in life. A private school deciding to charge for its valuable stamp of approbal has nothing to do with it being a fair price.
  • marcoperaza 11y ago
    Whenever people talk about making 'the rich' pay for something, remember that their definition of 'the rich' usually ends up being anyone who makes more money than them.
  • whack 11y ago
    It's possible that you're one of the unlucky people who falls into the combination you described above. Unfortunately, even the best system currently available will often have cracks, and you seem to have found the one that currently exists. The vast majority of the time, kids with rich parents have a substantially blessed childhood & family-support, which justifies them having to pay substantially more in tuition fees.
    • amluto 11y ago
      I tend to dislike systems of the form "if you make/own less than $X, you get $Y benefit". It often leads to nasty non-monotonic outcomes and like this. For actual public benefits, I'd much prefer to give all the benefits to all the people and raise taxes accordingly. This means that, as a CA resident, I think I should be permitted to deduct rent even if my AGI is $38,259, and I think I should get the full Affordable Care Act subsidy regardless of my income. The rules would be simpler and my taxes would be simpler. In exchange, I would gladly pay higher taxes to make up the deficit. For public university, it's a bit messier because of state residency rules. And for private universities, this wouldn't work at all unless the government directly subsidized private education. (But maybe the government should ditch all the complicated student aid and student loan benefits and offer a blanket subsidy for education at accredited universities.)
      • marcoperaza 11y ago
        Throwing more free money at universities will just make things worse.
      • _delirium 11y ago
        The universities I know of that have free-tuition programs do phase them out gradually, to try to avoid too much weirdness that would come from a hard threshold. For example, Harvard charges no tuition to students from households making under $65,000, but above $65,000 tuition phases in slowly, reaching full tuition only at $150,000+. However I do agree your proposed solution is better. Have universalist public programs that everyone can take advantage of regardless of income (tuition-free public university, no-charge public healthcare, etc.), and then instead of mucking with means-tested benefits and aid phase-outs as a way of indirectly taxing the rich, just tax them through actual taxes, the old-fashioned way.
        • Domenic_S 11y ago
          > above $65,000 tuition phases in slowly, reaching full tuition only at $150,000+ Which is still silly. Who has more to spend/better opportunity to save? Two parents that make $75k each in Mountain View or 1 parent who makes $64,500 in Nowhere, Indiana?
  • ploxiln 11y ago
    It also seems unfair when one's parents lived well within their means and prioritized saving and spending on education, so one's family has to pay all their life savings for university, while a friend's family with the same or slightly higher income but no savings is given significant financial aid. (Or maybe they're better at filling in FAFSA? My father is a self-taught accountant who later went pro (incl. classes/tests etc), but may have been too honest.)
    • asddubs 11y ago
      I mean, if tuition was free it wouldn't be unfair, because you'd both be getting it for free.
  • noonespecial 11y ago
    The price of Serious Education, like that of Serious Illness is now quoted at $ImpossibleSum and then generously negotiated down to ($EverythingYouveGot + $EverythingYouCanBorrow).
    • jimbokun 11y ago
      This is the economic issue in the U.S. right now, and the only candidate who seems to even acknowledge it is Bernie. It's a difficult issue for Hillary, whose husband oversaw implementation of some of the policies that created this environment. And all of the Republican voters seem to be more afraid of brown people possibly getting money from the government, than about whether or not they can get sick or go to school without going bankrupt.
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      • Grishnakh 11y ago
        The Republicans aren't as bad as you think. Trump has said (vague) things about providing health care for everyone. He's said a lot of things that are a big departure from standard Republican ideology, which is why a bunch of Republicans are calling him "not a real Republican" and the party as a whole is having a major shit-fit about him possibly getting the nomination. The guy isn't really a right-winger, he's a centrist nationalist as far as I can tell. The GOP is pissed at him lately because of his foreign policy stances, because he's voiced support for non-interventionism and staying neutral on Israel. But you're absolutely right about Bernie and Hillary. Hillary, to me, isn't much different from Ted Cruz, and even more like Rubio. They're right-wing war hawks in the pocket of Wall Street, and the only things they differ on are social wedge issues that they use to get people on each side to vote for them. AFAIC, our best hope is Bernie. Cruz and Hillary will both be a disaster and lead us into another war, and Trump is a wild card and highly unpredictable, though I think he's a lot less likely to get us involved in another war than Hillary or Cruz (he royally pissed off the GOP by saying the Iraq war was stupid).
        • 11y ago
  • diskcat 11y ago
    > but how is that fair? Socialism is only meant to be fair if you are poor. And as you say you are rich by association.
  • kough 11y ago
    I'm in a similar situation right now: on paper my father's business owes him a lot of money that he "loaned" it from his salary, but in reality that money does not exist and it's not going into his pocket any time soon. Mix in two brothers with their own college costs, stir to taste. I took two gap years to work and save money; it's absurd to me that I'm paying full tuition price in this situation, but the financial aid office doesn't give a fuck because they know as soon as my savings run out I'll take loans.
    • rdancer 11y ago
      Your family is too proud for the business to declare bankruptcy and go through Chapter 11 debt restructuring? When you're looking to pay tens of thousands in tuition, it helps to have a smart accountant, and plan a few years ahead. Is it a little unfair that people enter adulthood without a spec of financial literacy, and are immediately taken advantage of? Yes, but if a fool and his money are easily parted, the only real solution is to lessen that foolishness.
      • estefan 11y ago
        If only these people could get some sort of... I don't know... "education" to learn how not to be so foolishly parted from their money...
        • rdancer 11y ago
          After 12 years of primary and secondary school, one would think they'd have gotten some, wouldn't one?
      • kough 11y ago
        Wow, fantastic advice -- if only we weren't so financially illiterate, proud, and foolish to boot!
        • rdancer 11y ago
          Why's your father's business not bankrupt then, and why are you pissing away a fortune and going into debt when you shouldn't? Add denial to the lot.
  • plandis 11y ago
    I suppose it's a question of utility. If universities truly (I doubt this is really true) cannot afford to pay everybody's tuition then how do you prioritize need? One could argue that as someone from a wealthy family that you have a decent safety net if you fail even with large student loans. You probably have a place to stay at your parents home if you really needed it. Contrast that to someone who might be poor and have the same loans as you do but perhaps they don't have their parents' illiquid assets to fall back on. This happened to me around my senior year of college. It's a scary thought that once you're done with college you need to get a job or be homeless. It lead to a lot of stress in the fall semester of my senior year while I was job hunting. It also stands to reason that if you're from a wealthy family then you had access to a good education. I can't understate how unprepared I was for college being from a poor school district even through I was in the honor classes! Poor students play a lot of catch-up in college early on. This is really hard to do when you're also trying to work 20 hours a week to afford food. I'm not saying it's fair that you have so much debt but if it's zero-sum for financial aid I can understand why you were not given any over poor students whose parents are equally not able to pay. You're not thinking about the external factors that statistically probably put you ahead over a lot of poor students. Unfortunately that is life all we can really do is make sure our kids don't have the same problems!
  • mdpopescu 11y ago
    You're all for soaking the rich, except when it applies to you?
    • JonFish85 11y ago
      Almost by definition, "the rich" in the context of who should pay more in tuition/taxes/whatever is "someone better off than me".
    • jqgatsby 11y ago
      My line there was intentionally facetious. That being said, there are people who can legitimately afford to pay $100K in tuition. I was not one of them. I am doubtful that universities are able to distinguish between the two, but currently they pretend they can.
  • 13thLetter 11y ago
    > I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair? Perhaps this experience should make you rethink your support of "soaking the rich."
  • onion2k 11y ago
    The difference is that you come from a background where you see people (eg your parents) earning a good income and believe that a $100k loan is something you can actually afford in the long term. Someone from a poor background whose parents have never earned a high income would very likely see $100k debt as an impossible barrier they'll never get past, and consequently would be a lot less likely to take on the risk. If schools didn't "soak the rich" then the potential of the student from a poor background would never be realised, and humanity would be the worse for it.
    • jqgatsby 11y ago
      I'm not saying we should saddle people from poor backgrounds with the same crushing debts as the middle class folks. I don't know of another country that expects any students to take on the kind of debt burden that we take on here in the US. If they can make college affordable for everyone, even the middle class, then so can we.
  • 1stop 11y ago
    You know if you didn't want the 100k loan, you could have gone to another university...? You make being a privileged middle class kid seem like such a chore. There is always someone better then you, and there id always someone who got what you did for less. But on the flip side, you are also the someone to someone else.
    • alistairSH 11y ago
      FWIW, the total in-state cost for students at UVA is approaching $28,000/year[1]. U. of Michigan and Georgia Tech are similar. Take out the room/board fees, and you're still looking at $14,000/year just for tuition. So, even going to a top state university isn't going to keep you debt-free. Maybe not $100,000 in debt, but still a significant sum. There is definitely a "donut hole" in terms of aid available to middle-class undergraduates[2]. If you're poor, chances are you can obtain grants or other aid. If you're rich, you can pay cash and not sweat it. If you're somewhere in the middle, that aid dries up fast, but you can't write a check. [1] https://news.virginia.edu/content/board-visitors-sets-2015-16-tuition https://news.virginia.edu/content/board-visitors-sets-2015-1... [2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/01/29/middle-class-families-are-fed-up-with-their-financial-aid-options/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/01/29/...
      • elsherbini 11y ago
        I agree with your point that state schools are becoming extremely expensive for many. Georgia Tech (and all Georgia public schools) have the Hope Scholarship[1] for in-state students which pays 90% of your tuition if you meet certain academic requirements. They have the Zell Miller scholarship with higher acadmic requirements for the remaining 10%. It ends up being very good for lots of people, but the academic requirements, especially for your high school record, do introduce some socioeconomic and racial disparity with the awards. [1] https://secure.gacollege411.org/Financial_Aid_Planning/HOPE_Program/Georgia_s_HOPE_Scholarship_Program_Overview.aspx https://secure.gacollege411.org/Financial_Aid_Planning/HOPE_...
        • alistairSH 11y ago
  • twoodfin 11y ago
    You don't think an MIT education is worth $100K?
    • jqgatsby 11y ago
      It is definitely worth $100K. Just because it was a rational decision from my perspective is separate from saying that the system which decided to charge me that amount is a good system.
  • chrisan 11y ago
    Technically you walked in to MIT knowing you would have $100K of debt and weighed the pros and cons and decided in the end that, yes $100K for a MIT education was worth it.
    • conceit 11y ago
      And its his decision alone that makes it worth it, indeed. Nothing to do with economic pressure.
    • jqgatsby 11y ago
      I fully concede that taking $100K in debt was my best option. Saying that I did it freely and even well-informedly is not the same thing as saying it was a fair situation.
  • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >but how is that fair? Having no monetary help from a family making 100K a year is still different from having no monetary help from a family making 20K. If we want fair, how is growing up in a family with poor parents fair compared to growing up in a family with rich parents? While you might be able to blame the parent for their own financial situation, you cannot blame the child. >it was pretty upsetting to see kids who were ostensibly poorer than I was get a substantially easier start in life. Considering that they already had an ~18 year start of life where they likely weren't having it easier...
  • rbcgerard 11y ago
    I like that you talked about being "unfair" to rich people and fair to you in one sentence. So we should encourage people that earn decent money not to save adequately for their children's college education?
    • jqgatsby 11y ago
      I am not my parents. I did not have a say in their financial decisions. The argument you're making is equivalent to arguing that the debts of parents should be passed on to their children, a practice that was outlawed long ago.
      • rbcgerard 11y ago
        While there is theoretical merit to that line of thinking, the practical extension of that thinking is that for all intensive purposes nearly every student planning on attending college is jobless and broke (aka a high school senior) and therefore can not afford college, and thus entitled to financial aid (regardless of if their parents are billionaires or below the poverty line)
  • eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    If we had a functioning state university system, you could have gone to UMass for basically nothing.
• marcoperaza 11y ago
  That pricing structure has allowed these elite colleges to get away with gross waste and inefficiency. Imagine the scandal if Yale actually cost $50,000 a year for your average family. It'd blow up even more when people realized where all the money from tuition hikes go (hint: it's not toward hiring more professors). The people who get really screwed are those just above the threshold where they receive no or negligible financial aid.
• jimbokun 11y ago
  It's a tax on anyone whose parents have any financial assets. If your parents have next to nothing, sure, tuition will be very low. Whatever your parents do have, though, tuition will be set at the optimum value to extract as much of it they possibly can.