Don't Give Money to Fancy Colleges
slate.com
slate.com
No, you can't, not when it's the whole basis of your argument. My impression at an elite university was that if anything the upper-working class was least represented; there were plenty of students from the top, and some from the very bottom.
If you're going to claim that Harvard or MIT's financial aid is poorly targeted, you need to actually provide evidence for this.
This is disingenuous. Documentary evidence is restricted by privacy laws, but the anecdotal evidence is self-evident. That's why the evidence they do show, eg about the 70% in the top quartile, makes sense and is consistent with your comments (100-70-5=25).
Most "diversity" is from black lawyers, hispanic diplomats, and "poor white" children of liberal arts PhD's.
That said, MIT and Harvard have recently changed their systems; don't remember about Harvard, but as I recall MIT's aim is to eliminate crushing student debt. But I don't know how this plays out for them or in general for the expected parental contribution.
Ah, yes, by and large no one from a broken family attends MIT, at least as of the '80s, since both biological parents are or were expected to contribute and that very seldom works out, on top of all the other things divorce does that crushes children.
Stanford has the most generous tuition exemption I think, charging $0 tuition if your family makes under $100k (~80th percentile). They throw in free room & board under $60k, too, so you effectively get paid to go to school in that case (paid only an amount sufficient to cover living expenses, but still something).
However, two universities providing free education to people around the median income or lower is hardly a replacement for the once-free public university system.
As someone with a family making under $100k who did not receive free tuition, this is false.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/stanford-undergr...
[1] There are, or at least were, a bunch of other aid/social support systems that screw over people in this band as well. I would not be surprised if this is contributing to wealth inequality.
Someone in poverty with an IQ of 80 can't afford to get 10 years of education, so obviously the targeting of this funding is poor.
I reject the question. It's not "financial aid," it's "perfect price discrimination." What other vendor demands to look through all of your financial records, including asking the IRS to verify facts, before figuring out exactly how much money you can pay?
The implicit premise of the author is incorrect. The majority of these donations are not about helping the poor. If some of the money ends up doing so, well, that's gravy, but not the motivating intent.
There is certainly a subset that thinks like that. "Legacy" admission to a top tier school is probably not doing anyone any good, but that is a separate can of worms.
But to your point above: There are a serious number of donors who believe that they are doing a small part in improving society. As an example: Few people outside of tech know the name Cecil Green, but his donations have had lasting effect on several generations of students.
Well it presumably helps the donor and his family.
Not problematic IMO: You're paying for services rendered. Don't see anything wrong with that...
Only in some ways. Folks definitely know they are legacy admits, and it wasn't clear to me that the resulting college experience helped either the donor or the family compared to more sensible placement.
As for the university, it might help in the short run financing, but eventually the admissions committees might notice that the legacy folks are taking up spaces from future donors of higher caliber.
Transparency on the alumni relations of each student is the only way to go I guess...
For instance, when I was a student there (class of '82), the biggest demographic problem within the student body was the severe imbalance between men and women. The undergraduates were only around 15% women. That's frustrating for pretty much everyone.
Caltech addressed this by trying hard to (1) get more qualified women to apply, and (2) convincing more of those who were accepted to choose Caltech over the other schools that accepted them. Essentially, they would treat a bright high school girl with a talent for math, science, or engineering the way schools with effective sports programs treated outstanding high school athletes.
Nowadays, around 40% of undergraduates there are women.
That sets a pretty high bar. The last time I checked, which was before the Great Recession changed the game and increased applicants, MIT was getting 13,000 applications a year despite the extreme amount of self-selection, of which they judged 3,000 could do the work. From that they construct a class of around 1,100 students.
Even Harvard, Stanford, and Yale each admitted 3 people that year (which, interestingly were different people -- it's as if they colluded to induce enrollment).
It shouldn't be a situation where we have to pick 1 option out of 2. If you really want to reduce the socioeconomic gap in education, spend more money on public education as a nation. Donations from wealthy donors with next to no affiliation to local community colleges won't solve anything.
So reducing donations to the University is not likely to have a huge impact on research (at least in my field - biomedicine). If you want to donate to research, a better bet is to donate to one of the research foundations that disseminate grants to universities, and even better, to a foundation that restricts the amount of the funding that can be applied to administrative costs (which are often as much as 40% of the amount funded).
This is partly a result of: 1. Poor kids getting into elite universities 2. The existence of highly elite universities
If you provide less funding to the Harvards and MITs of the world do you really expect them to keep getting better and better?
And if the overtime become "less awesome" then the benefits one derives from attending will decline.
In that case, the poor kid that managed to get into Harvard, etc (or any of the Ivys, they all provide great financial aid) wouldn't benefit the way today's attendee does. The path for that poor kid to break into the uber wealthy just became harder.
The Mark Zuckerbergs, Steve Schwarzmans of the world make America dynamic. Poor or middle class kids that break into the uber wealthy and disrupt the way things are done.
Non-elite universities don't make that path easier - regardless of how much money you throw at them.
Elite universities provide poor kids with things we need: 1. Status / credibility - maybe not important in tech, but definitely important in high-finance, politics, etc
2. Exposure to those who come from families that have done really well
3. Access to leading faculty and research opportunities
You can throw tons of money at non-elite colleges, they still will not be able to provide the above. I'm not saying that non-elite universities are useless - they are incredibly important for having a healthy middle class.
But what makes America great in my opinion is that every few years 5-10 kids that grew up poor make it to the top, change our world, and kick those that were complacent while at the top out.
There are other valid reasons to donate to a university, but the really big names aren't going to start recruiting more poor kids if they only had a little more money.
Then I will happily give, and I expect a lot of deep pocketed alumni feel the same.
So, yeah, the interest could pay for all the tuition, except X of it is restricted to the law school, Y to the med school, Z to arts and sciences but not in any way that it can contribute to tuition, etc.
Ah, and tuition money is particularly valued, because it's unrestricted....
Inequality stems from the fact that by the time they reach college admissions, students from richer families are already more qualified (at least in the eyes of admissions committees). Addressing this would require either changing the admissions process, or helping students from poorer families to become better qualified prior to the admissions process.
Considering many low-income students start out at a community college, taking even one credit at one effectively locks you out from virtually all prestigious universities. It used to be the case that you COULD go from community college to a fancy private, but it's all but impossible these days.
Combine this with what you mentioned in the second part of your comment, and low-income kids are screwed both pre and post high school. It also screws over kids of all income ranges with highly dysfunctional/abusive families (who won't help with college, didn't support your pre-college academics/extracurriculars, won't sign your FAFSA, etc), since the only thing you can afford is a community college in those cases as well.
Now would also seem to be a bad time, certainly MIT and Harvard are really hurting for operating and capital funding. Brand new Olin College (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_En...) had to drop their full tuition offering to all students in 2009.
So while giving to fancy colleges is not necessarily the best use of money, it is not enough to show that the students there are privileged. If the students at those colleges were only there because of their privilege, then the author's point would make more sense.
I'm not sure if the article is trying to persuade potential donors to instead consider "lesser" colleges which might have more socioeconomic diversity. I guess it becomes a question of supporting: fewer low-income students at "better" schools; more low-income students at "worse" schools; or a totally different strategy to level the economic playing field in higher education.
I don't think donors are confused about these motivations.
But those other schools (Stanford, CMU, Harvard) are all non-profits.