How Colleges Are Pushing Out the Poor To Court the Rich

An anonymous reader writes "A change from 'need' based financial aid to a 'merit' based system coupled with a 'high tuition, high aid,' model is making it harder for poor students to afford college. According to The Atlantic: 'Sometimes, colleges (and states) really are just competing to outbid each other on star students. But there are also economic incentives at play, particularly for small, endowment-poor institutions. "After all," Burd writes, "it's more profitable for schools to provide four scholarships of $5,000 each to induce affluent students who will be able to pay the balance than it is to provide a single $20,000 grant to one low-income student." The study notes that, according to the Department of Education's most recent study, 19 percent of undergrads at four-year colleges received merit aid despite scoring under 700 on the SAT. Their only merit, in some cases, might well have been mom and dad's bank account.'"

Comments

Goodbye

[gagol]

Social mobility. Welcome Feudalism 2.0

Re:Goodbye

[pwizard2]

What you're describing is fascism, not progressivism. Ever since Reagan, the USA has been going balls-out towards fascism. Lots of people would say that we're already there. Us progressives want to create a society that cares about its people instead of just the very rich and where it's possible for everyone to achieve a decent standard of living regardless of where they start at on the socioeconomic ladder.

Re:Goodbye

[roman_mir]

But you wanted it, your entire ideology is based on destroying equality under law.

Your entire ideology requires to discriminate against some to provide subsidy to others, this is just a tide going the other way, you have pushed and pushed and you have gotten now what you inevitably pushed towards - inflation, lack of productivity, lack of personal responsibility and lack of individual initiative.

The government creates the moral hazard of fake loans that nobody in their sound mind would EVER give you out of their savings to go 'study' sociology, philosophy, literature. There was a story earlier in the day on this site about an employer not interested in these graduates, they are not worth the time, they have huge debts and they have proven themselves to be incapable of not following the crowd, they have proven to be lemmings.

Obama's new 'Pay as you Earn' idea is going to change the way people pay back loans, no more the loan payment will be tied to the actual loan amount, now it will be tied to your yearly earnings, so it will make sense to rack up the biggest debt you can and stay in college as long as you possibly can stretch, and then find a low enough paying job so that you won't be repaying too much. In 10 years the remainder of your loan is forgiven, and so colleges will raise tuition faster than ever before in history, I even fully expect to see doubling of tuition in a single year. Why not, you are not paying for it, you are not price sensitive.

It's a bail out, it's inflation. Elizabeth Warren wants to push interest rates for student loans to be the same as the rate the affiliate banks get at the Fed's discount window.

Good politics, I am sure 99% of you will agree and 99% of you want that to happen. Of-course it's terrible economics, the banks should not be getting that free money, that's inflation.

Of-course the banks are getting it from the Fed so that they can turn around and buy US Treasuries, to maintain the artificially low interest rates, to maintain the ability of the gov't to spend on your bankrupt social and military programs. The Fed also wants the banks not to fail for as long as they can stretch it, so the banks make the spread between the Fed's discount rate and the Treasury yield, a couple of percent, nothing fancy.

Except that it's over 2Trillion a year not counting the new 85Billion a month in just mortgages and refinancing. The Fed wants to reinflate the housing market, they are somewhat successful. The banks use these 'record profits' to inflate the bond and the stock market, stock market is record high.

Guess what, Warren's plan will make college tuition record high for the same reason that the stock and bond markets are high: inflation. Enormous inflation.

But her bill won't pass, however Obama's plan will and so don't worry, you'll be able to rack up all the debt you want and never have to repay it, just pay a little bit over 10 years. Of-course what are you going to pay it from? Who is going to hire these sociology and ethnic studies majors?

PhDs are going to wash floors in McDonalds.

Yes, it's the new feudalism, the politicians, your gov't, the bankers that are part of it are the feudals and you are the useful idiots.

-

Now go ahead, this comment only has one way to go.

Re:Goodbye

[akeeneye]

His health plan was changed so that his defense-contractor MegaCorp employer, that feeds almost exclusively at the trough of the Socialist military, could make more money. There's absolutely no question that this fantastically huge and wealthy company couldn't have maintained funding for the current plan. They simply chose not to, because In These Tough Economic Times, they can get away with it.

Re:Goodbye

[davydagger]

No, Progressives want to create a society which is actively managed by the top, instead of passively managed by the top.

The hallmarks of progressivism have always been regulating the working man "for his own good", in addition to aid and funding.

Fascism(real facism) is similar in concept, except more stringent, more violent, and more racist and factionalist.(progressivism is far friendlier).

What we've been heading towards since Reagan is Corporate Feudalism.

A good example of "fascism", would be the old Prussian style education system, where education was free, but it was harsh, strict, designed to teach group think and obediance and manditory.

Facists don't let people starve on the streets, but they aren't above shooting them there either.

In capitalism...

[elloGov]

Wealth and Power are compounding, always siphoning to the top. Unless you place restrictions, i.e. socialist policy, it's only a matter of time before serfdom ensues, It's no coincidence that 80% of the wealth created over the past two decades have gone to the top 1% of the population. Remember the dream of being millionaires in the 90s? Nowadays, billion is the dream. Yes, inflation over time is real, however it doesn't warrant an increase of 10^3 magnitude.

Re:guessing it's more complex than that

[NicBenjamin]

The problem here is that most families with $65k have no idea how to turn their 90th percentile kid into the kind of kid who gets into Harvard. They don't know about "SAT Coaches," don't know which extracurricular activities to push, don't have friends who can donate massive amounts to the orphanage little darling just founded in Kenya, etc. If one parent makes $150k, the other makes $60k, and their friends all work at Hedge Funds, it's really easy to look great on a college application.

More importantly they generally don't know that Harvard will be free for their kid. They see the Harvard name, they see the price tag in USNews is astronomical, maybe they google the actual tuition charges of roughly $37k, and instead of pushing their kid to apply to Harvard and spend $0 they push him to apply to [cheap state school] and spend $10,000 or so a year.

There was recently on article on three Latina friends from a small city in Texas. The one who went to Emory had loans, but that was because as a teenager she didn't understand all the paperwork requirements needed to get aid. Her family had nobody who had ever gone to a school like Emory, so they couldn't help very well.

Re:living in america :(

[erroneus]

I read somewhere...

We spend more per capita on prisons than we do on school. Something it really messed up with our priorities.

Re:Q&A

[pwizard2]

You'd rather live in a society where there is no escape from poverty if you weren't talented^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hlucky enough to be born a millionaire? That's where we're headed if what TFA is about becomes commonplace. The idea is that everyone pays for it through taxes. This inherent selfishness of "I've got mine so fuck everybody else" is what is destroying my country and I'm sick of it! All the conservatives who bitch about taking care of other people have benefited far more from society than they can fathom and yet they can't see it. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization and part of civilization is making sure that everyone has a decent standard of living. Yes, you're paying for other people, but guess what? Other people are paying for you at the same time so it all works out. If you don't want to pay taxes you clearly don't want to live in a civilized country either.

Re:living in america :(

[Fluffeh]

I hear this statistic a lot as some kind of indictment of our education system, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

Wow, that train of thought has completely blown me away. I am not even sure on where to start replying to you.

If you spend more on education, not just tertiary, but primary and secondary, it will nurture youth to have higher aspirations, it will teach them more. If you have someone leaving secondary school with a good understanding of basic subjects (math, English, at least one science and computers) as well as a rounded splash of some elective subjects such as history, economics, art, music, religion they are much more likely to either look for further education on their own (even if they have to pay as much for it as in the US) and move on to being a productive member of society rather than ending up in prison.

That's not to say that everyone with a good education will never do anything illegal or end up in jail, but the number of people in prison with a poor education should stand out above anything else that to keep people out of prison, give them an education. Give them the ability to actually join society as a peer rather than as the bottom of the ladder cleaning the bathrooms or working as a parking attendant.

This concept of paying more earlier also has the advantage saving more money in the long run. If you don't need to pay for putting someone in prison AND have the benefit of that person contributing to the society they live in, it clearly is a win-win scenario.

Re:living in america :(

[kermidge]

Not bad, and I agree that education is a key element to much.

But why does damn near every 'good' job these days require a fucking college degree? Many use little more than what can be gotten readily with a year or two of voc-ed, if that. (1986 want ad in local paper for a dish washer at country club ended with "Send resume [sic]..." Inflation indeed.)

Further, ask yourself why have we effectively demonized such activity as parking cars or cleaning? It's useful work which in some manner makes life better for others. Should this not be a source of pride? And a liveable income as well? Why do we continually stratify tasks such that we have people upon whom we look down our noses? Doesn't this say something a bit nasty about the fragility and skew of our own perceptions about self-worth? Why is someone who brings food to a table or washes the dishes that come back somehow a lesser being? Is it required to have a de facto caste system? Or is that just the way it is because that's just the way it is? Seems to me what humans make they can generally un-make, or make differently.