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I will stand corrected if I can find the sliding scale with accurate data fulling explaining the formula. But what I saw myself years ago at school, and curren

I will stand corrected if I can find the sliding scale with accurate data fulling explaining the formula. But what I saw myself years ago at school, and currently hear anecdotally, is that most subsidies - from the feds, states, the university, scholarships and grants, etc. - seem to be distributed in a rapidly diminishing fashion instead of linearly (subsidies vs income). In other words, the most poor (or certain minority groups), will get nearly a full ride. The truly wealthy at the other end will get very little, of course. But those in the middle get far less than would be expected if the subsidies were linearly scaled. And so once you earn just a bit more than the most disenfranchised, you don't get much, and instead get saddled with loans.

joshuamorton 9y ago
Which schools are you looking at, anecdotally? Ivies work differently than most other schools by virtue of having larger-than-normal coffers. For example, Harvard's financial aid works in much the way I describe. Families with incomes below 65K pay nothing, those with incomes 65-150K are "expected to pay between 0 and 10% of annual income", and those above that are evaluated on a case by case basis. I'd play around with this[1], and see what you think. For a family of 4 with no liquid assets, you need to be making 265K a year to not get any aid. That puts you solidly out of the middle class anywhere except SV/NY, where I expect you could make an argument about CoL adjustments. [1]: https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculat...