Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

This article suggests that schools are taking an interesting step to avoid such resentment:

White appreciates, for example, that Harvard gives low-income students free tickets to the freshman formal, but they have to pick up the tickets in a different line from everyone else. “It’s clear who is getting free/reduced tickets and who isn’t,” he says...

This seems like it might be an effective strategy. Take the people who are living on the largess of others (e.g. grad students on a stipend, poor undergrads on financial aid) and give them constant reminders that they are there thanks to the contributions of others. Then perhaps they'll feel gratitude instead.

In much the same way, my CEO likes to remind us that annoying as customers can sometimes be, that's where our salaries are coming from.

View on HN

Aren't students with wealthy families literally attending school thanks to the contributions of others? I say this as someone fortunate enough to have parents who saved their whole life to pay my tuition - I understand I am fortunate for that, I didn't literally earn that money in any way before attending school and performing well to justify it being spent, and I still can't argue that in any way is the same as literally working for that money. On the other hand I knew classmates who basically worked like slaves for four years at terrible, thankless jobs, struggling to pay rent in an area full of luxury housing targeted at the wealthy, just trying to pay their tuition after loans and aid. This at a school where Greek house membership fees run into the thousands, literally engineering a class divide in the student social life.

I'd say "constantly reminding" someone and their surrounding peers of the fact that they are of lower stature economically is a recipe to divide the student base and breed resentment. You would be less likely to feel resentment standing in a separate line from most of your peers, looking at a bunch of students with outfits worth more than a month's rent, singled out for getting "handouts" from your school? Don't grad students typically earn a stipend working a job anyway? I don't see that as any more "living on the largess of others" than going to school on your family's money.

Aren't students with wealthy families literally attending school thanks to the contributions of others?

It would be ungrateful and counterproductive if such students felt resentment towards their parents, no?

Don't grad students typically earn a stipend working a job anyway?

I earn a salary by working a job which aims to make customers happy (same as when I was in grad school on a stipend). However, I don't feel resentment toward those customers - that would be counterproductive and harmful.

I don't remotely follow the logic you're applying here. I did not suggest anywhere that these students feel resentment to their sources of financial support, but rather that highlighting class divisions in a university will breed resentful attitudes among students towards each other. Do poor students somehow owe something to wealthier ones just for attending the same school? Please describe in clear terms exactly what kind of logic you're applying here because to me it mostly seems like something an undergrad with a swiss watch would be boistering about in the dining hall.

Did you somehow get the impression I think grad students should be resentful towards the university because of their stipends? I think most of them are grateful - I meant to convey that it's disingenuous to think of a grad student's stipend as some kind of handout, I really can't understand how you interpreted that as you did.

Wealthy students (or their parents) pay full price, supporting the university and all it's operations. Many of them pay more than full price via donations and such. One of the things they are paying for is support/scholarships/etc for the poorer students.

I don't think a grad student's stipend is a handout, just as I don't think my salary is. Nevertheless, grad students should be grateful to the undergrads/taxpayers who are supporting them, and I should be grateful to my employer's customers (I am).

My daughter attends an expensive prep school and gets a chunk of it covered by financial aid. I am indeed grateful, but I would suggest there's another possible way to frame it, which is that the wealthy parents of my daughter's classmates are paying extra to place their own children with the smartest, hardest-working students, regardless of socio-economic background (which in turn creates a more diverse student body, which is also a benefit). So while I respect that there is a charitable component, I also believe there is a transaction taking place that benefits all parties. Consequently, singling financial aid kids out as somehow special or lesser would, I think, be as unfair as either customers or wait staff in a restaurant to somehow be made feel inferior to one another.

The undergraduates with rich parents are also technically living off of the largess of others. A family probably feels more of an obligation to support their own children but it's not like the majority of undergraduates paying tuition are "self-made."

Speaking from personal experience, this would cause more resentment rather than gratitude. I worked more hours to ensure that I didn't have to wait in these types of lines wherever possible. I found that people with money were less likely to want to associate with you once they found out that your family didn't have any because it made them feel awkward.

I just want to point out that poor student are absolutely not at the mercy of rich students.

Poor students are needed at these schools to maintain the prestige and reputation of these schools. If they only allowed those who could afford to pay, a lot of great talent would end up elsewhere and then the reputation of the school would suffer.

In terms of real scarcity, it is actually the rich students who are the most easily replaceable. If those poor students went somewhere else, they would still do well and within a decade the new schools would start challenging the reputation of these elite school.

Guys, yummyfajitas is kidding. Of course he wouldn't consider a grad student stipend "living on the largess of others". Right? This is Poe's Law, right?

Having been reading HN for years, I can confirm that yummyfajitas is not kidding.

Although I think he was referring to financial aid rather than graduate stipends.

> Take the people who are living on the largess of others (e.g. grad students on a stipend,

Ah, okay... yeah.

I was on a stipend during grad school. And I was grateful, rather than resentful, towards the undergraduates and taxpayers (in my case, far more of the latter than the former) who paid for it.

I enjoy exploring ideas that are emotionally unpleasant, but which it's hard to construct a logical argument against. Some unpleasant ideas turn out to be correct!

It's fine to be grateful, but a grad school stipend is not charity. You are being paid to perform a service. If the undergraduates (or more commonly, their parents) and taxpayers did not think research and teaching were useful, they wouldn't pay you.

To a first approximation, everyone is there due to the contribution of others.

Of course students on financial aid, etc., should feel gratitude. Surely other students shouldn't be high on the list of recipients.

It does sound like an effective strategy - but for class reinforcement. It's a good way to generate resentment, not gratitude.

It's weird how people who claim to like exploring "edgy" ideas never doubt the concept of property. Rich students exist on the largesse of grad students, not the other way around; the institution they attend would not exist without them.

> Take the people who are living on the largess of others (e.g. grad students on a stipend, poor undergrads on financial aid)

Graduate students at schools like this are funded primarily through grant money and sometimes endowment money, not undergraduate tuition.

Undergraduates on financial aid are never funded through others' tuition. That's 100% donations and endowment.

> and give them constant reminders that they are there thanks to the contributions of others

I suppose we should also have a special line for everyone who's using daddy's credit card?

The majority of poor students already know that they're getting a free ride; shoving it down their throats in public helps no one. Actually, it would likely lead to even more resentment which would probably even leak into the classroom environment. On the other hand, I would argue that the vast majority of rich students don't appreciate their position at all.

Meh, I usually agree with your comments, but in this case the resentment is towards people who have a lot of money and haven't earned it (not that they're bad people, they've simply been dealt a good starting hand).

On the contrary, you should be thankful these people aren't actively stripping your house of valuables to afford necessities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com