Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

How much do you think community college costs these days after a Pell Grant?

Is it more efficient to have a whole complicated financial aid system or just provide discounted access to everyone.

Time is money.

+1 to this. As someone who had both scholarships and pell grants (i made money going to a state school in utah) I still would have just preferred discounted tuition for all.

I want to second this point. The percentage of young adults (this is the demographic that represents most fo the current community college population) living below the poverty level is about 40% [1]. So even in the absolute worst case scenario where the Pell grant only applied to those below the poverty level and all those above that level started taking advantage of the free community college your efficiency could drop by a factor of two. In reality, there is a significant fraction of those below the poverty level who don't know about such Pell grant opportunities and the complexities of federal student aid and would never apply, but would jump at the opportunity for a free education. Also, a more realistic assessment of the efficiency question would require a better picture of how many people below the target of the Pell threshold would start taking advantage of the program. I would suspect that only a small fraction of people from the top 10% income bracket would pursue this, since they have other opportunities available. So lets say that we actually have something like a 50% reduction in efficiency to get the money to the target audience, and a side effect of a few tens of millions of people outside the target audience getting their education subsidized. There is obviously room for improvement, but I would support that scenario.

[1]http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/pubs/br...

At LATTC everyone knew about financial aid. It was the default situation. I haven't been there, but I've been to CC in a low income community, and the assumption was that you'd get financial aid. Being middle class, middle aged, and not qualifying, I had to quietly explain that my personal income was past the limit, etc. I didn't want to stick out.

The problem these schools have is related to people lying to get financial aid, and then dropping out, never to be heard from again. If you get rid of the price, and school is free, all this fraud would end. (The fraud would happen elsewhere in the system.)

Not to mention that the more complicated the financial aid system becomes, the less likely the people who need educational help from a community college will be able to actually get it. By requiring you to already have the skills to navigate it, the complexity forms a barrier to entry that just discounting the cost does not.

I'm sympathetic to this view. In general, I tend to favor flat programs that no one prices out of instead of need-based programs, because it gets rid of the marginal tax that happens when you earn more. (Every program that is just "for the poor" is a marginal tax on the person climbing out of poverty.) Also, I view the financial aid merely as price discrimination. We wouldn't consider another industry as compassionate for looking through our finances before deciding what we could "really afford."

However, all that said: the FAFSA really isn't that hard to fill out. If a person cannot fill out the FAFSA, why are we sending them to college? Will we fill out their college application for them, too?

FAFSA documents are not complicated to fill out, but the overall process require you to spend some amount of time on jumping through various hoops. Also, it has prerequisites and conditions you need to keep track of. For people who are short on money (and therefore time) all of that has significance.

College requires time and jumping through hoops. If you can't keep track of the FAFSA application, how are you going to keep track of the class assignments?

Is the goal to make "attended college" become completely useless as a job market signal? Why are we trying to cram people into college if it means nothing?

College requires time and money, yes. The FAFSA is supposed to provide them for people who don't have them already. So saying 'if you don't have time and money you shouldn't go to college anyway' is kind of missing the point.

There seems to be a communication failure here, because you accuse me of saying things I'm not saying. They might be things you wish I were saying, but I'm not.

I'm working off these two premises:

1. The FAFSA is free to fill out, but it takes time and attention, which you say some people do not have.

2. Even if we make community college completely free, it will still take time and attention.

So, if the FAFSA is a significant barrier to someone getting into college because it takes time and attention, why do we think this person will suddenly garner a mass of time and attention when it becomes necessary to do the classwork?

There is definitely a communication failure here. Are you asking why filling in the FAFSA might solve someone's problems around lack of money, or are you disagreeing that lack of money is a contributing factor to the lack of time and attention they prospective students have?

In case it's the first: the FAFSA, once filled out, makes these students eligible to receive money in the form of student loans and grants, which can cover living expenses as well as tuition. And to address the second: having money means you don't have to work, or can work fewer hours, and in general reduces the cognitive load of 'how do I afford to live', freeing up time and attention that the student can now put towards their studies.

At first my adviser did all of this for me. It was waaaaaaaaay easier than any test I ever took in college.

Community College isn't just about college level work. Some of their developmental courses start at the fourth grade level. Many of the people attending are fairly new to the country.

A lot of states already heavily subsidize the tuition of public community colleges and universities for residents. Where I live, in FL, 75% of the cost is paid for by the State of Florida.

I don't know about you, but 75% of the cost seems like a pretty sweet discount. Seems reasonable if you want more, you should have to go through some kind of application process.

I know most of my peers (myself included) could have gone to Penn State local campuses for 2 years and then 2 years at State College for free, only having to pay room board and food (and overpriced books). I went with a private liberal arts college that gave me nearly a whole boat though.

I think even if you are under a 2.5GPA in high school Penn State subsidizes 80% of tuition and the state does another 10%, so each semester of courses would only be at most a few hundred dollars.

At the school my partner went to, LA Trade Tech, it seemed like most students got financial aid. There were multiple offices involved in doing all the paperwork involved (in a multi-story building, too). The school was located in an area where the household income was around $25k per year, and many people worked at the minimum wage. It seemed absurd to me that they had to jump through so many hoops to get a few hundred dollars of aid.

$95 refers to the cost per semester at Sacramento State University.

Depends on the pell award. Place I am working is at $1,650/semester Tuition and Fees for 12+ credits (prorated for under 12 credits). Books are around $350 semester and we don't have housing yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com