https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/12301...
Others have followed suit - Northwestern recently announced that they would just grant financial aid recipients whatever part previously would have been loans.
When I was applying to college in early 2010s as someone who received financial aid (parents made ~$100k total), I could attend:
* [top 20 school - private] for ~18k a year
* [top 50 school - private] for ~18k a year
* [sub 200-rank school - the main in-state school] for ~$9k a year
* [top 20 to top 40 schools - state - out of state] for $30k-$40k...
These big state schools were the most surprising to me because everyone always says "if you're smart they'll have so many scholarships for you it'll nearly be free!"
But when it came down to it the good state schools weren't even in the running. I took the more prestigious school name for half the price.
I knew a dude who did community college in Northern VA (NVCC) and transferred to Cornell. Shaved off a lot of costs, got a scholarship, and walked out with an Ivy League diplo. All of those hills were good for his leg strength, too.
Unfortunately, I'm still paying for being mediocre in my high school years!
It's a more prestigious school than their USNWR ranking would indicate. Reed refuses to fill out the USNWR yearly survey, and is ranked lower because of it.
And Steve Jobs went there, but he dropped out.
Liberal arts college rankings aren't comparable to large university rankings. There are thousands of them, and many have specialized niches.
You need to adjust your scale when looking at colleges versus universities, and even then USNWR rankings are a crude metric if you are interested in a specific program.
Also, the idea that "elite professional service firms" and Ivy/Ivy-tier Universities have similar selection criteria doesn't seem at all surprising to me. But I don't think that's a model that's appropriate or useful for most HN readers.
For that matter, my local community college system offers _guaranteed admission_ to several respected (and selective) universities. I.e., not only _can_ you do two years at community college and transfer to one of these more prestigious universities for a four-year degree, you can enroll in programs that guarantee it. (And several schools apparently found this useful enough to actively create a pipeline for it.)
Which means that in the city I live in, if both parents work full time minimum wage jobs, their child might be able to go for free, since the minimum wage here is $15. It would even be slightly harder if the parents worked in San Francisco, since minimum wage is a few cents more there. I doubt anyone in that situation feels like that minimum wage is making it easy to live in the area.
Programs meant to accept people from across the nation that peg goals/limits to specific income amounts don't seem to make all that much sense to me. :/
There are thresholds and guidelines, but in my experience financial aid officers have a lot of flexibility and discretion. They look at the complete picture, including assets, number of other siblings that are dependents/in college, etc.
You can also appeal the financial aid decision, and just going to that trouble will often get you a bit more aid if you have a decent reason.
The depressing part was how many people obviously lie and misrepresent their financial situation to try to cheapen their student's aid cost. Not that I can really blame them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand. And there's basically no risk to trying, the aid officers just look at it and are like "obvious lie, rejected" or "possible lie, ask for supporting evidence/documents".
At a high enough income level, is it out of hand? If the parents' income is, say 7 figures per year, why not charge even more, and in doing so increase the assistance to those making closer to the median household income?
I just think that
1) the price tag is inflated in the first place
2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings and I can understand the reaction to try to cut the corners a bit.
Inflated relative to what? The cost of providing the education? Or relative to its perceived value? The latter ultimately dictates the price. Perhaps $70k is the point after which really wealthy people say rebel and refuse to send their children there, regardless of how small a portion of their wealth it is?
> 2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings
I agree, which is why I wonder why the $70k limit for those well above the income level where it stings.
Then again, a higher top-level tuition depends a lot on the distribution of very wealthy parents whose kids attend Harvard vs the just upper middle class (there is a large difference between the income/wealth those two groups after all, bigger than between the middle and upper middle-class, given the exponential shape of the wealth distribution curve).
And perhaps the very wealthy (let's say in today's terms net worth in the mid 10 millions and up) already make significant donations to the University, so it would be meaningless to raise tuition to i.e. $90k in that case.
Simple solutions like this readily suggest themselves. However, iiuc, in top-tier universities, tuition doesn't seem to be the significant proportion of revenues, so increasing fees wouldn't really enable anything and might have diminishing returns. For Harvard in 2019[0], the sources of revenue were:
- Philanthropy : 43%
- Research: 17%
- "Other": 18%
- Tuition: 22%
Also:
- number of students nationally has plateaued.
- tuition costs have reached limits of affordability.
[0]: https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_fin...
Affordable, to me, was in-state tuition at $3,000 per semester at a state school, with a few community college classes. This was mixed with scholarships, and my parents subsidizing books and on campus living some semesters as that could more than double the cost of tuition.
Are you saying that Harvard could have arbitrarily and unilaterally spit out a number close to that? And routinely does for people whose parents make more than $65,000?
My comp sci degree has the same utility as anyone else that didn't go to Ivy League / Stanford.
I'm not arguing that Harvard isn't expensive for affluent families, but even with an income like that you would still probably get financial aid. Harvard doesn't charge anything like full tuition to families under $200k a year, the point is just that they charge nothing at all if you make under $65k.
I fail to see how that is unfair.
I also asked a specific question, which you completely skipped, while doubling down on a fairness argument that this thread wasn't even about. You act knowledgeable in the matter and then aren't able to dive in, only defend your position. Its fine to say "I don't know", but right now what are you doing?
Were you saying that Harvard's "affordability" was anywhere close to the $3,000 tuition / semester I ended up paying? And that's because Harvard routinely makes up any number based on a variety of financial variables (which aren't as simple as "income") and ultimately feelings?
Household income of parents is obviously a bit of weird proxy for an almost-adult child. But, I bet it works quite well at finding academically inclined people who assumed they couldn't afford X University and persuading them that they can.
The alternative would probably be something like requiring all parents to buy "education insurance" for their children, which turns into a lump sum at 18, and then giving people with lower incomes a discount on that insurance. (This is a terrible idea, don't do it. Make education cheap or free instead.)
Harvard’s assumption that the parents can shill out tens of thousands for their kid is just dumb. They don’t realistically take into account parents that don’t care much about education, large families, parents with lots of debt, etc.
That said, yes, if you have more money left over per child than someone else, you are expected to pay more.
Based on my experience going from one state school to another, there can be a night and day difference in access between even state schools. I would be shocked if going to any Ivy League school didn't open up many, many doors that are closed to us plebs.
I wonder why not many Americans go study abroad, if studying in their own country is so incredibly expensive and studying abroad can be cheaper and a richer experience. Especially comp sci is taught in English in many non-english speaking countries.
Did you consider going abroad when you were evaluating costs back then?
Thinking about my personal career trajectory, my first job came from an internship set up by my university. A coworker from that job left and pulled me to my second, and when I left there it was because an old classmate referred me to a third.
Had I studied abroad and returned home I would have lacked that network, and that feels like a risk.
Nothing you did in your university was guaranteed and was just as much of a risk.
I don't think non-elite schools offer a noteworthy network, especially for computer science or IT.
There is elite, and then there is everywhere else that's accredited where you just need a sheet of paper with the correct degree name on it.
But yes I've become a fan of what Germany and some other countries offer. I've seen something that made me even more envious: a friend in neighboring Austria was in University there (for free) and it turned out the school was like a sister school to NYU and she wanted to go there and was able to go to NYU for free.
We are really getting the short end of the stick in America right now, amongst developed nations.
How many people stay more or less their whole life in their home town?
Harvard is not “fairly cheap” and likely has something to do with their students largely coming from wealthy families.
I think that's not quite right?
"About 55% of Harvard students receive need-based scholarship aid with average grant totals around $53,000."
I went to a school with this weasel language all over their content. My kid was offered $3k/year in financial aid because the school said I should pay 65% of my annual gross to cover tuition.
It’s nice that they have some token poor and working class, but Harvard is for the rich...
“ According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% of students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households. About 15% come from families in the top 1% of American wealth distribution.” [0]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/it-costs-78200-to-go-to-harv...
> I should pay 65% of my annual gross to cover tuition
Harvard's financial aid is very clear cut and no one would be expected to pay 65% of their gross income.
> 67% of students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households
A household income about about $130,000 is enough to be in the top 20%; how well off you are with that income depends on where you live.
Some high-income families (top 5% of households), with an expensive mortgage and other bills, may have difficulty with paying the full amount, or close to it. Good luck finding sympathy for how those rich people chose to spend their money instead of saving for their child's education.
Sounds to me like a rich person saying “works on my machine.”
This is pretty unrealistic for a family making $130k at the time the first kid hits college to tell them they should have saved more. Especially since tuition is growing faster than inflation or average market returns.
For example, if a family was prescient and knew their kid would get into harvard from conception, and they would have 18 years to save that $200k. If they already made $130k and are fortunate to keep a job all 18 years and if their income grew at the average rate, that’s $15k/year or, assuming they live in NY or CA, about 20% of their net income.
That’s if they only have one kid.
Asking middle class families to forego retirement while 15% of students are in the US 1% is callous.
> For example, if a family was prescient and knew their kid would get into harvard from conception
They wouldn’t have to know they’d get into Harvard but they’d hope their child would go somewhere and at their income level Harvard would be cheaper than many state schools.
Also per that NYT article on wealth at colleges ~15% of Harvard frosh come from the top 1%, so that's a decent chunk of the remaining 45% that clearly don't need aid and likely did not even apply for any.
I doubt you will find many people out there that feel they paid too much for Harvard. Certainly there are bigger fish to fry as far as college tuition rip offs.
Harvard College was not forced by federal policy to dramatically increase their financial aid back when they did. The 2017 tax bill did include a new tax on university endowments tailored to only apply to the wealthiest universities, including Harvard (it has the largest endowment but I'm not sure it's the largest per student).
If you're a hedge fund manager who just retired and is now making $0/yr, sure it's not free.