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Why would you do that through financial aid? If a kid's worked hard enough to get into school they should be allowed to go regardless of their financial status,

Why would you do that through financial aid? If a kid's worked hard enough to get into school they should be allowed to go regardless of their financial status, 75k a year is not affordable at all to a household making 150k a year. After taxes that's nearly all of that home's take home pay. You can give poor kids a leg up with consideration to their backgrounds during admissions time - make it harder for more privileged kids to get into school in the first place, I'm all for it. I don't see how that's a separate issue at all. Your second point doesn't make any sense - we should be punishing children because of the amorphous negative externalities of every professional in the United States economy? They're to blame as opposed to the leadership of modern corporations that vote themselves multi million dollar bonuses each year while offshoring business and keeping worker pay down?

rayiner 4y ago
We’re not talking about “punishing” individual kids. We are talking about the policies adopted by non-profit colleges with respect to use of their endowments. I don’t see any problem with basing that decision on the desire to reduce income inequality—inequality that’s being driven in large part by armies of upper middle class people who have been pulling away from the middle class over 30 years just as even richer people have. What’s wrong with universities structuring their financial aid policies with that in mind?
xyzzyz 4y ago
> 75k a year is not affordable at all to a household making 150k a year. After taxes that's nearly all of that home's take home pay. Hopefully, American making $150k/year heard about savings, and can also predict the expense of college, and can plan for it in advance.
- prepend 4y ago
  This is such horseshit. First, the $150k is at the time of child’s application, not over their entire life. Second, college tuition has been increasing at highly variable rates so I doubt anyone would have guessed that tuition would increase 8%/year for 18 years. Third, four years of Dartmouth tuition is $300k. Let’s graciously say the average income over the kid’s 18 years is $100k. That means that that parents would need to save $16k/year or 16%. There’s no tax deferred program that allows $16k/year so factor in tax dollars. Fourth, families frequently have multiple children. So if they have two, you think parents should save 30% of their income for college? Or if 3, 45%? It’s funny how people imagine $150k is some massive amount of money. And it’s a decent living, but it’s not something that paying an extra $6k per month is possible.
  - kaesar14 4y ago
    I've stopped bothering to argue this commenter, it's clear they think that an engineer making 150k a year supporting a family is the same as Jeff Bezos.

rayiner 4y ago

We’re not talking about “punishing” individual kids. We are talking about the policies adopted by non-profit colleges with respect to use of their endowments. I don’t see any problem with basing that decision on the desire to reduce income inequality—inequality that’s being driven in large part by armies of upper middle class people who have been pulling away from the middle class over 30 years just as even richer people have. What’s wrong with universities structuring their financial aid policies with that in mind?

xyzzyz 4y ago

> 75k a year is not affordable at all to a household making 150k a year. After taxes that's nearly all of that home's take home pay. Hopefully, American making $150k/year heard about savings, and can also predict the expense of college, and can plan for it in advance.

prepend 4y ago
This is such horseshit. First, the $150k is at the time of child’s application, not over their entire life. Second, college tuition has been increasing at highly variable rates so I doubt anyone would have guessed that tuition would increase 8%/year for 18 years. Third, four years of Dartmouth tuition is $300k. Let’s graciously say the average income over the kid’s 18 years is $100k. That means that that parents would need to save $16k/year or 16%. There’s no tax deferred program that allows $16k/year so factor in tax dollars. Fourth, families frequently have multiple children. So if they have two, you think parents should save 30% of their income for college? Or if 3, 45%? It’s funny how people imagine $150k is some massive amount of money. And it’s a decent living, but it’s not something that paying an extra $6k per month is possible.
- kaesar14 4y ago
  I've stopped bothering to argue this commenter, it's clear they think that an engineer making 150k a year supporting a family is the same as Jeff Bezos.