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The 'sticker price' comparison is really misleading here. I don't think the Wall Street Journal do anything to correct this. Here's what the article says: > A
by objclxt 13y ago
The 'sticker price' comparison is really misleading here. I don't think the Wall Street Journal do anything to correct this. Here's what the article says:
> A degree [at Minerva] will cost less than half the average top-end private education, which is now over $50,000 a year
At Harvard today, the minority of students pay full price. Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship. Notably, if your family earns less than $65,000 per year you will pay nothing to attend.
Minerva wants to charge students $20,000. There is, as far as I can tell, no financial aid policy or bursaries available. And why would there be - Minerva is, after all, for-profit.
If your family is at or below the median household income in the US then Minerva is an extremely expensive proposition. Whereas at Harvard, and many other colleges, it's free.
- argumentum 13y agoEven if "Minerva" was $1/year, the question is one of value. A degree from Harvard at $50k/year is more valuable than a free one from a UC Berkeley Dean's scholarship student (which is probably about the same difficulty to attain), simply due to the perception it engenders from people that matter.
- rjbond3rd 13y agoNo offense to anyone, but I'll take that Berkeley kid any day.
- argumentum 13y agoAs may I .. that's not the point.
- rjbond3rd 13y agoIf you're saying "people who matter" value the superficial over substance, then I'd further conclude that they literally don't matter.
- argumentum 13y agoMy wording may be wrong. If you have something in common with someone, you are more likely to help them and want to work with them. The fact is, Harvard/Ivy/elite private school alums, on the whole, are currently in greater positions of power than Berkeley/elite public school alums (this may change in the future of course). For that reason alone, the value of being "from Harvard" is greater than being "from Berkeley".
- rjbond3rd 13y agoI see what you're saying, but I'm so glad I don't live in that world anymore.
- argumentum 13y agoDid you move to Mars? We all live in "that world", it's not a choice ..
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- argonaut 13y agoAgreed, but you are ignoring the opportunity cost. It is highly dubious whether a Harvard education is worth more than a UC Berkeley education + $239,996, though this distinction varies from field to field.
- argumentum 13y agoNot really. The opportunity cost of going to Berkeley over Harvard (and I'm specifically choosing Berkeley, a top public school with some programs having a similarly low acceptance rate to Harvard) is not knowing the people who went to Harvard, who are more likely to have powerful connections. $200k is nothing, really, in the long term. It's one or two years of salary, whether you've gone to Harvard or Berkeley. It's the non-salary aspects that make the Harvard degree (not education) more valuable.
- argumentum 13y agoWell actually not even the degree .. just actually going to the school, even if you drop out prior to graduation.
- argonaut 13y agoMy point was that this distinction is dubious because while Harvard is probably worth more for some fields, like finance or law, in other fields like engineering, UC Berkeley + 240k is worth more in my opinion.
- argumentum 13y agoStill, depends on the purpose. Do you want to get a job at Google or Facebook? Then in engineering, Berkeley would be as good or better than Harvard. But who wants to get a job after undergrad?
- argonaut 13y agoBut who wants to get a job after undergrad? What do you mean by this? Are you talking about starting a startup? You could fund your own company for $240k and work on multiple ideas in that time (assuming your first few ideas fail quickly).
- dominotw 13y ago>Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship. I am not sure if aid and scholarship are the same thing. But according to this http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/diversity-lack-figures-evidence-harvard/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/diversity-lack-f... Over 45% of students dont even qualify for aid because their parental income is over $200,000 " we come to the stunning conclusion that approximately 45.6 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200,000, placing them in the top 3.8 percent of American households. Even more shockingly, only about 4 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes and a mere 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles of U.S. incomes." Which also means that over half the students wouldn't care much about the cost of tuition.
- lmartel 13y agoBut exactly 0% of Minerva students will come from those quintiles if the tuition is 20k with no aid. Unless they take out loans, of course, but that puts them in a much worse position than if they attended a mainstream elite school, which are all very proud of their widely publicized "no loans" financial aid [0]. [0] http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/09/pf/college/no-loan_financial_aid/ http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/09/pf/college/no-loan_financial...
- objclxt 13y ago> I am not sure if aid and scholarship are the same thing. At most Ivy Leagues it effectively is. Harvard also has a 'no debt' policy, so that aid really does have very few strings attached. The Crimson article you linked to uses data from 2010/11, whereas I'm using the latest figures from the admissions office.
- argonaut 13y agoHonestly, data from 2010/2011 is sufficiently relevant. College demographic data does not change drastically between years.