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One thing that gets lost in most of these debates is the fact that many students don't pay the sticker price that universities advertise. At most of the top 50
by dvvarf 15y ago
One thing that gets lost in most of these debates is the fact that many students don't pay the sticker price that universities advertise. At most of the top 50 universities in the US, something like 50% of students receive some sort of financial aid/subsidy. These discounts are often substantial.
The $50k sticker price is a tool universities use to price discriminate based on a family's ability to pay and how much a university wants a student. Thus, it's not crazy to see a talented student from a low-income background paying something like $2k a year to attend a top-tier university. Of course, this doesn't really answer your question. This phenomenon still leaves the 50% of students paying full freight, and only applies to wealthy universities that can afford such financial aid programs.
- nkassis 15y agoFinancial aid is pretty hard to obtain now days. Your parent's must be in the lower range of salaries combine for you to obtain anything other than unsubsidized loans. Pell Grants and other such things are pretty uncommon from what I've gathered. Once I managed to become independent as a student, I was making too much (35k a year) for any student aid so I had to pay full price (albeit I was smart enough to go to school in a state were education is pretty cheap, Florida if you have to know).
- william42 15y agoFrom what I've heard, financial aid is much easier to get at Harvard than, say, FSU.
- lurker19 15y agoFor who? Did you mean to pick a different state for your example? For Florida residents, Florida state colleges are tuition-free for all qualified applicants, but these schools pad enrollment with students who do not show college-readiness but choose to attend and pay (subsidized) tuition anyway. http://www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org/SSFAD/factsheets/BF.htm http://www.floridastudentfinancialaid.org/SSFAD/factsheets/B... Harvard is tuition-free for all but the wealthiest few who can easily afford their share without sweating.
- dvvarf 15y agoSo the relevant qualifier to my statement above is top 50 institutions in the country. Florida isn't among them. To make the qualifier more precise, I was thinking of institutions that are members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE, http://web.mit.edu/cofhe/ http://web.mit.edu/cofhe/) which is a group of private universities that behave similarly.
- rayiner 15y agoFlorida is also relatively cheap to begin with, as with many state schools (GA Tech alum myself, hehe). The big numbers are posted by private schools. However, the top private schools have great financial aid. Under $120k/year, Harvard and Yale are free. The aid phases out after that, but doesn't phase out completely until $250k+.
- lurker19 15y agoSource? For Harvard, your numbers appear to be high by a factor of 1.5 to 2. http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page248616&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent488603&state=maximize http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&page...