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Most students aren't paying that much. Sticker prices are often much higher than what students actually pay. The sticker price at Harvard is around $60k, but 70

Most students aren't paying that much. Sticker prices are often much higher than what students actually pay. The sticker price at Harvard is around $60k, but 70% of students receive financial aid from the University and of those students the average paid is actually only about $12k per year. Some quick googling reveals that 52% of Boston University students receive financial aid, and the average award is about $30k per year. What's happening is that only students from wealthy families are paying $70k a year, and they are basically subsidizing everyone else.

joatmon-snoo 9y ago
> What's happening is that only students from wealthy families are paying $70k a year, and they are basically subsidizing everyone else. To be fair, this is what the system strives to. More and more schools are achieving an equitable balance (this is also why top unis are shifting towards need-based policies, as opposed to merit-based ones: your merit threshold for FA should be the threshold at which you accept students), but there are still kinks (IIRC students from farms are one notable demographic - their families tend to have high cashflow, because of the sheer value of the equipment and crops that they work with, even though their net income is incredibly low). On the other hand you have schools like NYU that pretty much exist to strip their students of financial assets: they combine administrators who don't care for furthering their institutions as ones of education, but rather moneymaking tools, with financial aid offices so miserably incompetent that they presumably only exist so that they can claim to have such on marketing materials. (Apologies for the vitriol, but as a New Yorker I've always been ashamed of the school, and it embodies all too well so many of the things wrong with our higher education system.)
ssalazar 9y ago
> What's happening is that only students from wealthy families are paying $70k a year, and they are basically subsidizing everyone else. Not just students from wealthy families, but wealthy alums- the Ivies and other top schools have gigantic endowments. The annual returns on the endowments of Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. are more than enough to fund tuition for every single undergraduate at those schools.

joatmon-snoo 9y ago

> What's happening is that only students from wealthy families are paying $70k a year, and they are basically subsidizing everyone else. To be fair, this is what the system strives to. More and more schools are achieving an equitable balance (this is also why top unis are shifting towards need-based policies, as opposed to merit-based ones: your merit threshold for FA should be the threshold at which you accept students), but there are still kinks (IIRC students from farms are one notable demographic - their families tend to have high cashflow, because of the sheer value of the equipment and crops that they work with, even though their net income is incredibly low). On the other hand you have schools like NYU that pretty much exist to strip their students of financial assets: they combine administrators who don't care for furthering their institutions as ones of education, but rather moneymaking tools, with financial aid offices so miserably incompetent that they presumably only exist so that they can claim to have such on marketing materials. (Apologies for the vitriol, but as a New Yorker I've always been ashamed of the school, and it embodies all too well so many of the things wrong with our higher education system.)

ssalazar 9y ago

> What's happening is that only students from wealthy families are paying $70k a year, and they are basically subsidizing everyone else. Not just students from wealthy families, but wealthy alums- the Ivies and other top schools have gigantic endowments. The annual returns on the endowments of Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. are more than enough to fund tuition for every single undergraduate at those schools.