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There's a cynical take that the social function of the absolute elite universities is to allow young upper-class people (with family wealth and access to wealthy networks) to network with the smartest and most driven members of the middle- and lower classes (who will get things done).

Presumably, the willingness of the family to make sacrifices for their child is a positive indicator for how driven the child will be.

Cynical, or merely descriptive? https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-the-fuck-do-you-tru...

Oh man that was a good read. Especially since you can MadLib the institution name and so many other parts of it.

Good catch.

They use weasel words

"Dartmouth is now removing the loan requirement for undergraduates from families with annual income of more than $125,000 who receive need-based financial aid."

Most students coming from families earning 125k+ won't actually qualify for any aid.

The entire financial aid system is broken. Have a domestic violence situation at home, so your parents don't want to fill your FASA out, no aid for you !

Still live with your supportive parents at 24, you automatically get the max amount.

If I ran the world, I would give everyone aid for up to 6 years, and get rid of affirmative action completely.

I'd argue the vast vast majority of students are better served going to a community college first. Figure out if college is even something you want to do , and if it is, get yourself a part-time job or better yet a full-time one so you understand how to manage money.

I went to a community college first. I also worked in my dad's business, sometimes behind the cash register. I've had my own consulting business, I think I know a little bit about 'handling money', and I don't consider myself particularly better served by that community college bit.

Also went to CC but I highly disagree, it was great saving two years of tuition costs

> Most students coming from families earning 125k+ won't actually qualify for any aid.

Good?

75k a year of college is affordable for a household income of 150k? Really?

If you’re family is making $150k/year then your kids don’t need the leg up from going to an Ivy League school.

Really? So the only people who should be able to go to Ivy League schools are those poor enough to get aid and those rich enough to pay for the entire fee? We shouldn't be evaluating our youth on their merit? What kind of solution is that?

Great way to make sure that the children of the professional class of people who make that sort of money (lawyers, engineers, nurses) not work as hard as possible and use their upbringing to contribute to the future of the country. Putrid take.

> Really? So the only people who should be able to go to Ivy League schools are those poor enough to get aid and those rich enough to pay for the entire fee?

Giving poor kids a leg up over upper middle class kids is a win regardless of what you do with rich kids. That’s a separate issue.

> Great way to make sure that the children of the professional class of people who make that sort of money (lawyers, engineers, nurses) not work as hard as possible and use their upbringing to contribute to the future of the country.

The upper middle class has been instrumental in the last few decades in driving inequality. Behind every factory that’s shut down in Milwaukee and outsourced to China there’s lawyers and consultants and even logistical engineers making that happen. See: https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jul/15/how-us-mi...

So we should be punishing children of consultants to make them atone for the hereditary sins of writing reports/collecting information so some executive somewhere can actually make the call?

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?

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?

> 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.

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.

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.

What college costs $75k/year? My kids go to the flagship state school in Illinois (Champaign), their tuition is less than 1/4 of that, and we pay full freight.

Dartmouth. The one this article is about.

And many more.

So, respectfully, and I'm sorry for the emotive language, but don't fucking go to Dartmouth. The existence of the Bugatti Veyron does not means cars in general are a 7 figure purchase.

Our parents generation were able to go to colleges like Dartmouth at an affordable rate. Now we are not. There's clearly a problem that needs solving.

No, it isn't. Dartmouth is a luxury good. It's undeserving of any public policy consideration. If my parents found it easier to buy a yacht than I do, I wouldn't consider public policy interventions to "correct" the situation; I'd write my parents yacht off as a blip, and move forward.

Why? Why do parents even have an expected contribution for college? I mean, if they want to help their kids out, then go for it, but why is the expectation that when one adult purchases a certain service, we analyze the finances of related adults to determine how much the service should cost. No other thing operates like that.

I think most parents help their kids. For me, my parents had tax problems so I was unable to complete a FAFSA so I couldn’t get any aid that depended on the FAFSA.

Although I don’t know a fix because if you had special situations for people like me, people would abuse it. I had a friend with divorced parents. The dad was pretty wealthy making like $500/year and paying the mom $100k/year in child support so the mom didn’t work and had like $3k tax returns from some part time job. She swore an affidavit that she received zero income from the dad and that the son was estranged from the dad. So the friend got a 100% needs based scholarship. It’s not like schools have an investigative arm to test claims.

I think this is a great idea, but for different reasons than you’d think.

If you read around, there is an epidemic of college freshman whose parents have the ambition, and will do whatever to force their kid into the college and even the major they choose…(sample: https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Adult-Overparenting-Prepare..., these are students entering Stanford whose can’t make their own decisions).

Who ended up stuck with the loans for these degrees that the kids may not want or have the independence to take advantage of? Not the parents… the students are the ones suffering for their parents’ ambition.

Obviously not the whole picture, and maybe it’s not completely right yet, but I think this particular direction will help some of those students.

You mention affirmative action but not legacy admissions?

This is not accurate, I just had a kid graduate from Dartmouth a couple of years ago and my wife and I make right around $150k combined with her working part time. We paid around $35,000/year, so Dartmouth covered about half of tuition costs. We did also take advantage of the federal student loans, it seems reasonable for the kids to have a little skin in the game as well.

35k a year is a ton of money. No way the typical 6 figure earning couple has that.

I make a good amount too, and I don't have a spare 3k per month.

Let's just say you have a rough time after 2 years.

At community college , you're out maybe 2 or 3k total. Using your own numbers, that would be 70k spent without a degree.

Sadly, quite a lot of tuition seems to be supporting university employees who simply don't care.

A friend of mine wanted to go to school after working for over a decade. She went to the University of Miami, got to the Continuing Education department and noticed not a single person on duty but a taped piece of paper saying everyone was working remotely due to CoVid. In 2022! Headed on to the location for Undergrad Admissions and was given a website where she could get more info. For a school that charges $65K+ a year.

It happened again at a college in DC where all that she could get was a website versus speaking to an admissions counselor, getting a group tour on some particular date, etc.

Even though about half of the university employees encountered were college students, their attitude of just cashing a paycheck and keeping the seats warm is both a cost and a reflection of the quality of administration.

So much of University tuition now seems to be going to maintain salaries and perks for layers upon layers of employees and administrators versus student benefits.

I’ve noticed something similar at the company I work for and I think I have an explanation. Basically, upper management doesn’t understand what it takes to accomplish tasks anymore due to maligned incentives from middle management. Middle management wants to progress up the corporate ladder, which it does by growing its team size. E.g. by growing a team of 10 into a team of 100 with new layers of management below. This happens even if the scope of work remains largely unchanged. As a result, no one knows how many people it takes to accomplish tasks. There are so many people that ownership becomes and issue. People can simply pass the buck. And any sense of autonomy fades as more people are brought on to do a dwindling pool of actual work. The end result is large, inefficiently run bureaucracies.

>It was really frustrating. So the wording on what financial contributions should be, like in this article, has lots of wiggle room. It seems Dartmouth is covering tuition for families making $65k or less. But a single year’s tuition is $60k, so good luck to families making $70k.

That's the point.

This is a non-change. They've always accepted a few poor people and dolled out scholarships under the unspoken guise of "economic diversity". If you don't fall into that category you either need to be rich or exceed the typical admissions requirements by enough to warrant an exception. The university is just patting itself on the back for something it's always been doing.

> I think these legacy universities don’t want to lower tuition because they still admit lots of rich people who just pay. But the middle class is really squeezed out. Of course the lower class is squeezed as well since it’s hard to get accepted if parents can’t afford tutors, coaches, etc.

IMHO, income from college endowments that are larger than one billion dollars should be taxed at 110%.