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How could Cornell, Columbia, Brown, etc keep their level of education if they allowed families who make 125K to pay 12K?
That's less than the local state school here charges.
Massive endowments, fueled by extremely generous, rich alumni. Managed properly, a school can charge very little, still attract incredibly talented students, and get the money at the end from donations.
There is likely a correlation between attending a top school and having a better-than-average chance of a career that results in unreal amounts of money. Note I didn't say causation, although that's likely in many cases.
I'm an Asian-American east coaster and probably over 75% of my Asian-American peers attended Ivy League schools. I'm not bragging, it just is. It's actually kind of a bad thing, but that is another story.
1) Your assertion that 125K is 'chump change' is erroneous, especially from one earner, especially in Kansas. Most of our families made that or less (inflation adjusted). The difference is ... and I'm not trying to be bigoted here, it's just something that happens ... that Asian families save specifically for their children's college education as a #1 priority. They don't go on vacations, buy nice cars or furniture, or go to nice dinners and have drinks. Ever.
2) Nobody gave any of us anything. My parents made combined what you make and we got nothing in terms of grants. Loans yes. The standard stuff. I only got into one Ivy, but a bunch more similar schools (the Hopkinses, etc) and my sister got into a few Ivies and they gave us nothing. My friends also got nothing.
3) I also had white friends in high school whose parents made even less. Probably somewhere on the order of 75-80K today family income, high cost east coast and they got zilch from the Cornells, Columbias, Georgetowns, etc. Again, they got loans yeah. Everybody gets those. You need to probably be significantly lower than median household income to sniff grant $.
4) Again. Need means NEED. Using stingy, education obsessed (to a fault) Asian parents as a model, private schools typically cannot justify giving free $ to people who make 125K a year. If what you say is true and East Coast salaries are inflated, that means that 125K in Kansas is like 175K household a year NY/NJ via one earner. That's a lot of $. That's like a doctor, man. Can you see the kids of a doctor getting free $ to school? Merit is different. But you need to be a superstar beyond superstar to get that at Ivy League level schools.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's different these days. 25 years ago the Ivies were pretty stingy, I have many friends and relatives still paying off loans. Over the last few years, many of these schools have been making an effort to graduate alumni with no debt.
How could Cornell, Columbia, Brown, etc keep their level of education if they allowed families who make 125K to pay 12K?
That's less than the local state school here charges.
Loads of costly-on-paper private schools, Ivy and otherwise, undercut local state schools in the end. Mine did. The cost to me of attending the mediocre (to be generous) state university nearest my home worked out to be much higher than attending my private, out of state alma mater. A massive endowment does a lot, as does eligibility for grants and scholarships.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's different these days. 25 years ago the Ivies were pretty stingy, I have many friends and relatives still paying off loans. Over the last few years, many of these schools have been making an effort to graduate alumni with no debt.
You may be right, but I cannot see it without a catch.
Half the kids who go to Harvard cannot be paying 20K a year or less. It's impossible.
You may be right, but I cannot see it without a catch.
Half the kids who go to Harvard cannot be paying 20K a year or less. It's impossible.
It's no problem for Harvard, they have a huge endowment. Schools like Brown might have a little more difficulty, but that's what their development departments are for.
In the long run, it might even help to boost alumni giving. My wife went to one of the big three (HYP) for undergrad and she's reluctant to donate partly because she received so little financial aid. I give generously to my 'elite' NYC private high school, in no small part because the school is tuition-free. The experience feels like less if a transaction and like more of a community when you're not worried about making tuition payments. That sense of community might also lead to a greater sense of service and generosity.
You may be right, but I cannot see it without a catch.
Half the kids who go to Harvard cannot be paying 20K a year or less. It's impossible.
It cost $4.4 billion to run Harvard last year.
They had an income of $1.1 billion in gifts and $600 million in "other income (parking, patent royalties, etc).
Without federal aid or tuition, they'd operate at a loss of $2.7 billion annually.
Harvard has an endowment of $36.4 that grows over 10% a year (15.4% last year).
If everyone went without paying tuition, they'd never run out of money...
And they'd never be able to upgrade their facilities either.
You may be right, but I cannot see it without a catch.
Half the kids who go to Harvard cannot be paying 20K a year or less. It's impossible.
No, it's not. And it's not just Harvard, but plenty of other schools can afford to do this. Apart from the paying customers, who are still a huge chunk of the student body and who provide a great sum of money through tuition dollars, etc., the University relies on an enormous endowment to help offer such generous financial aid packages; this actually accounts for the bulk of funding for these initiatives. Additionally, students who are receiving need-based aid will often qualify for federal/state-based grants, money that goes to the university as well.
To get a better understanding of things, consider this: Tuition at Harvard College is roughly $43,000 per year. Even if half of the undergraduate population (roughly 3,500 students) was paying nothing in tuition, we're talking about $150 million that Harvard would pay per year. I doubt Harvard is putting up that amount of money per year when factoring in that not everyone in that group is a full ride, but the university certain could afford to do so with its large endowment returns and annual fundraising. I know that I'm only touching on tuition and not room and board, but those numbers don't drastically (again, considering Harvard's great wealth of resources) the equation of affordability on the University's part. Also, I repeat that the University still gets many millions of dollars per year from federal and state government in financial aid for students from working class/poor backgrounds. Additionally, given that even the "poor" students have to be brilliant to get into Harvard, I'd imagine that many of them are coming into the school with a ton of outside academic merit scholarship money, which further helps to offset the cost burden on the University (the same is likely true for some of the students coming from better-to-do backgrounds).
Those opportunities exist at nearly all colleges, but they're not the end-all and be-all, even at solid, well-known, accredited institutions. Sometimes, you do indeed learn by attending class, doing the reading, and going to office hours-not by reading 2 books a week and constantly 'debating' in class. I'd really like to see how that works when you're learning how to apply differential equations to physics problems.
I attended a major public research U. I can't speak to other departments or majors, but specifically to applying differential equation's to physics problems. We probably learned 70% in the student lounge. Our department was set up so that students were expected to work together with faculty to learn. It was quite common to see a group of undergrads working problems on the board in the lounge and before long upper classmen, grad students, and even other faculty would join in. The best part is the faculty expected you to challenge them rather than just accept what they said, but they would also challenge you. You learn an amazing amount of physics that way by trying to "out physics" the other guy. My daughter attends there now and tells me it still much the same way.
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