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Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 (nytimes.com)
Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records. At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League -- Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown -- more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent. From a report on the NYTimes (alternate non-paywall link): Roughly one in four of the richest students attend an elite college -- universities that typically cluster toward the top of annual rankings (you can find more on our definition of "elite" at the bottom). In contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college; less than half attend any college at all. Colleges often promote their role in helping poorer students rise in life, and their commitments to affordability. But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income families than on expanding access. "Free tuition only helps if you can get in," said Danny Yagan, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of the study.
The "elite" schools, based on their reputation, generally only attract applicants who believe they can afford to go there. I had exceptional ACT/SAT scores but I was not interested in the financial burden of such schools so I went to a large public research university instead. However people who are living lifestyles that can afford such expenses will consider applying. It didn't matter in my case that there tuition assistance and financial aid; the cost gap at the time was still too enormous between podunk state and Yale to even consider bothering with an application.
Even if the gap has reduced on the tuition level, the cost of living at those schools is still very very high and the students know that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
we try to keep the riffraff out.
If the Endowment is large enough they can give every student free tuition. If there is no endowment, everybody pays. In the middle, they need enough people paying full-boat to subsidize the kids who need a full ride. Look at the economics before you assume ill intent. There is no magic money and locking kids into thirty years of debt is no magnanimous gesture.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't think it's even a matter of legacy enrollment.
The elite school I'm acquainted with is MIT as my wife has her degree from there and spent several years interviewing students that had applied as part of their evaluation process. They do not consider money or othewise having an ability to pay when students apply, but on the other hand most students do come from households with means. This happens because students from households with means do better in school than students from households without means.
A specific case I remember was a student that had applied but wasn't going to go higher in high school mathematics than Trigonometry. This student wasn't going to get any Calculus instruction in high school at all. In order to get to Calculus in the school system as a senior, one had to do well enough in mathematics in the fifth grade in order to end up in the Honors Math in the sixth grade, to then take Pre-Algebra as a seventh grader and the first-year Algebra class as an eighth grader, so one could take second-year Algebra, Geometry, and Trig/Pre-calculus in one's freshman, sophomore, and junior years, to have time left one one's academic schedule for Calculus as a senior. Otherwise one has to take one of these mathematics classes, typically Geometry as it ties-in the least with the rest, as a summer-school make-up class in order to get ahead.
So, decisions/involvement/circumstances for the parents and household when the student is ten years old ultimately impact if that student, eight years later, will have the prerequisites to compete at an elite college. Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Big difference between the 1% and the .01%.
The 1% has a lot of doctors/dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers, educated people who are going to push their kids to get educated.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/
Overly complicated explanation.
Poor people can't afford top colleges.
You don't even need a feedback loop to explain it.
Also, without education the poor will remain poor no matter how smart they are.
What's the point of making it to the 1% if you can't send your kids to schools that others can't.
These school pride themselves on "diversity" or at least the "right kind" of diversity. They spend all their effort focusing on ethnic and gender diversity with almost no effort for economic or cultural diversity. This is what happens when the recruiters are generally nice, but low functioning collage graduates who could not find careers in their original field. They have their definition of diversity and do not expend any critical thinking skills trying to find where their ideas fall short of the stated goal of creating environment with diversity of thought. You end up with schools where people all look different but think the same.
The far more relevant study would be to determine the earning potential after humans piss away four years and Ferrari money on an investment that isn't paying out these days.
Of course, the Education Mafia selling college degrees wouldn't ever allow that kind of study to happen...
the top 1% can afford to send their kids to good private child care, elementary school, high school. This funnels them into top schools. I'd be interested to see how many of the 60% who are at elite private schools come from high schools with >80% "1%'ers". Is it largely the very gifted few who can despite poor circumstances get slots at private schools through programs like prep-for-prep that are going on to these colleges. Dan-el Padilla (princeton prof) is a great example of this. Is he the exception or the rule (within the 60% group)
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Kids from families with high incomes have significantly higher test scores; highly competitive universities will therefore overwhelmingly select from high-income families even if they exclusively select based on test scores. So, there is nothing particularly surprising about this result, nor does it demonstrate any kind of discrimination of selective colleges against low income kids.
You can now debate about whether high income causes kids to have high test scores, i.e., if you only gave kids from poor families more money, they'd be doing just as well. That is true to some very limited degree: kids who lack essentials (food, clean water, etc.) are held back by that, but fixing those problems can't increase their intelligence beyond their potential.
Most of the correlation is likely primarily caused by the fact that smart parents tend to have smart kids (through a combination of nature and nurture), and that high test scores and high incomes simply result from that.
I read one story when applicants for the Harvard Law School buy expensive cars to make themselves look "poor" to qualify for financial aid. If you're attending the Harvard Law School and don't have an expensive car, you're doing it wrong. No wonder the U.S. is screwed up.
Exactly.
Also, if your parents are wealthy:
1) They're more likely to be still together providing a more stable two-parent upbringing.
2) They're probably only working one job. They're home in the evening to help the kid with homework.
3) You're going to get a healthier diet. Your brain will develop properly because you have the nutrition you need.
4) Your parents are going to value you getting an education more, because they have one and know how important it is.
5) You live in a neighborhood with high home values- which means higher property tax, which means your school is better funded.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you're among the 1-percenters' offspring whose parents either went to these elite institutions or can afford to donate something substantial to get you in, why is it surprising that elite schools have more well-off students? There will always be efforts by the institutions in the form of scholarships and flexible admissions practices to diversify the student body, but the top colleges are definitely a pay-to-play operation.
There's basically 4 factors that determine where you end up in life -- how smart or successful your parents are, how wealthy they are, how much raw potential you have, and usually a whole lot of dumb luck. Smart or successful parents can afford to live in a good school district and provide a stable environment for their kids. Really rich parents can buy their way into the elite prep school track. Really smart students can often succeed enough to overcome a bad environment. Anyone can get lucky and just have things sort of work out for them. In my case, it was a combination of a good home life and a lot of right place/right time luck. I wasn't a good enough student to be in the scholarship bucket, and my parents weren't rich, but I did go to a decent K-12 school system and had involved parents who kicked my butt enough to do reasonably well. My dumb luck was getting a part time job doing tech support for the state university I went to, eventually doing it just short of full time, and using that to get my foot in the door at my first IT job.
The reason the elite schools will always have the lock on the 1% crowd is that once you're in, regardless of how you got there, you don't have to rely on luck. It starts with non-religious elite private schools. If your family can afford college level tuition for a K-12 education, there's a tacit agreement that one of the elite universities will have a spot for you. (Seriously, one school near us charges almost $40K for grade school tuition, but it's in the top 15 or so among elite boarding schools.) If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail. White-shoe management consulting firms exclusively hire from the elite universities, and that's probably one of the most lucrative jobs a new graduate can have. The same goes for investment banking -- going from being a broke college student to making $250K a year is a big change. People who work for investment banks, management consulting firms and other similar employees mysteriously tend to wind up in very lucrative positions at their clients eventually, and the old boys'/old girls' network perpetuates.
This is why I feel states need to invest in public universities. It's basically the only lever the non-elite among us have to get ourselves to a better situation. If you're not smart enough or have a unique enough situation to get a full scholarship to a private university, your best bet in most states is to go to a big public college and milk your time there for all it's worth. I'm socking away money for my kids' college education, but unless they turn out to be absolute geniuses this is going to be the advice I give them too. Life may be a matter of who you know or dumb luck sometimes, but it never hurts to increase your chances. If you work hard and have a good run of luck, it is still possible to at least be comfortable. We'll see what the future holds though.
The top 1% own more mansions than the bottom 99% combined. The top 1% own more Ferrari cars than the bottom 99% combined. The top 1% go to the most expensive schools. Did you also know that the bottom 99% get more grants for education than the top 1% by 100%? How about the amount of "free" tuition from scholarships going to mostly the lower 90%? More assistance programs exist for the bottom 30% than the top 70%.
There is no equality of opportunity at any level when discussing higher education. I don't want rich people to have "free" college any more than I want lower income people strapped with decades of debt for useless degrees. There is plenty of rational dialogue on making sure there is no discrimination and that College is actually useful and not just brainwashing. Those issues are not being discussed. Discrimination is simply assumed all the time regardless of any facts by way too many people.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
AFAIK, schools like MIT (or my alma mater Caltech), are the exceptions that proves the rule. Single dimensional focus on academics (e.g., STEM) might be *one* way to get into an "elite" school that has a narrow focus, but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard, or Stanford.
Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Although "academic-basis" is one way to generalize and dismiss, there are so many more "poor" families that 1%-ers that doesn't fully explain the issue. I spent quite a bit of time working and researching college admissions (during and after my time in university) and perhaps one of the big problems qualified students from "poor" families have getting admitted to "elite" schools is that even if they are qualified, they don't actually apply (which makes it really, really hard to attend).
The reasons are numerous, but often are attributable to fear and low-expectations (e.g., of getting rejected, figuring out how to pay, distance from family and support systems, etc). Unfortunately, this behavior is ultimately self-defeating in many ways as it sets a lower internal "baseline" for themselves to judge their future success. Some of these were outlined in the infamous 1999 Dale-Kruger research report summarized below...
There are many estimates of the effect of college quality on students' subsequent earnings. One difficulty interpreting past estimates, however, is that elite colleges admit students, in part, based on characteristics that are related to their earnings capacity. Since some of these characteristics are unobserved by researchers who later estimate wage equations, it is difficult to parse out the effect of attending a selective college from the students' pre-college characteristics. This paper uses information on the set of colleges at which students were accepted and rejected to remove the effect of unobserved characteristics that influence college admission. Specifically, we match students in the newly colleted College and Beyond (C&B) Data Set who were admitted to and rejected from a similar set of institutions, and estimate fixed effects models. As another approach to adjust for selection bias, we control for the average SAT score of the schools to which students applied using both the C&B and National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972. We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges. However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students' subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.
In other shocking news, it was reported that the top 1% own more Ferraris than the entire bottom 99% combined! How unfair!
Even the summary indicates that these schools bend over backwards to accommodate their poor students. Not only that, this isn't an article about poor students, but rather the entire lower 60% income bracket is compared. If you are in the 60th percentile for income, you are not poor.
Also, without education the poor will remain poor no matter how smart they are.
I think that is a large part of what the parent was saying.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think we fought a war in the 1940's against people with the ideology that their people were superior and so deserved better chances
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
captcha: sonata
Overly complicated explanation. Poor people can't afford top colleges.
Not true. Top schools have huge endowments, and way more alumni donations, so they can offer more aid for poor students. Most do not consider ability to pay during the admissions process. If you are talented but poor, a top school is likely more affordable than a second tier school because of the more generous financial aid offered.
News flash: NOT EVERYONE DESERVES OR IS ENTITLED TO COLLEGE.
What's next, reporting that "Mercedes drivers are more likely to be from the 1% than the lowest 60%"
-Styopa
You missed the part where they may have the money but they don't increase the number of seats. So even though they set up programs to help low income students they don't necessarily have the space. When the kids applying have the same last name as some of those grants and a building on campus you know which one is going to get preference.
Big difference between the 1% and the .01%.
The 1% has a lot of doctors/dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers, educated people who are going to push their kids to get educated.
http://www.nytimes.com/package...
To put it a different way, the 1% value education because for the most part it's why they're the 1%. The values you pass to your kids matter far more than the money.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I have given a grand total of $0 to my University since graduating. I had to work a full time job and gave almost every penny I earned to tuition or lodging for four years. I sure as heck am not going to pay them now! Especially when about 20 years ago when I was there their sports program LOST $6million a year (for a small university with under 3000 students that works out at about $2700 per student... I hate to think how much they lose now). They also wasted things like $20k to put in a small sign at the front of the university (how do you justify $20k in 1990's dollars, on a tiny sign?)
They wasted the money I got when I went there. I'm not giving them any more now I'm no longer attending.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Given that it's known that genes play the biggest role in one's intelligence, it's possible and even likely that this is simply a matter of pedigree.
MIT is very different from the schools they are talking about. Harvard, Yale, etc are schools for the "elite". Not the intellectual elite, but the social elite.
but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard,
Ok, but STEM people shouldn't want to go there. Or actually any of the Ivy leagues mentioned. If you want tech, the big recruited schools are MIT, UCIC, GA Tech, etc.
or Stanford.
Except maybe this one, although it's questionable.
d perhaps one of the big problems qualified students from "poor" families have getting admitted to "elite" schools is that even if they are qualified, they don't actually apply
As a father planning for his children's education, many years hence. I go to these schools websites and look at their tuition. It is beyond all reason for all but the very wealthiest. My house doesn't cost that much. And I have two children. So yes, unless their academics are far beyond the pale and their SAT scores are maxed out, I'd discourage them from applying.
I'm aware that there's some sort of pirates code with those tuitions, but honestly it's just not worth it at half the price unless you really want to be in academia or research (or perhaps Law), and even then only in relatively trivial liberal arts fields.
as it sets a lower internal "baseline" for themselves to judge their future success
Hence we discourage our children from even considering these schools by labelling them as schools for rich kids whose daddy's can buy their way in. Which, in my personal experience of 3 people, describes 2 of them really well (in fact they were dumb as stumps but daddy paid for people to cheat for them). Of course this does reinforce the effect. The good news is eventually these schools fall out of grace, hence my comment at the top, most of the Ivy League schools are fully worthless except for fields in which reputation matters more than skill (hence STEM oriented people can successfully bypass this hurdle). I'm not sure I'd want my kids to attend any of those schools, they're highly impractical for working class people who will need ROI on their college investment.
Of course I would like my children to be able to get in to MIT, and it has the same hurdles with cost and has the same very, very low acceptance rate.
Smart parents --> high earnings
Smart parents --> smart kids (doesn't matter if you believe that's due to nature or nurture, both are at play)
This is a consequence of feminism. Two generations ago, lawyers were men and they married their secretaries. Doctors were men and they married nurses. Today, lawyers marry other lawyers, and doctors marry other doctors. Smart/rich people pair up, and dumb/poor people pair up. This is causing economic inequality, since it is not individual, but household income that is measured.
No. Tuition is the major cost followed by housing and food. $500 in fees per semester is negligible, unless it must be provided out of pocket.
All true, and for the top 1%:
6) You had part-time tutors, learning specialists, etc come in to help as needed when you weren't getting As in a class
7) Your maid took care of doing the dishes and making your bed so you got to read, play, learn, etc in all your free time
8) You know how to behave around rich people and college professors because you were around them all the time
9) You've been to several foreign countries by age 10, often with an expert guide just for your family
10) You know how to navigate a white-table cloth restaurant, a cocktail party, an art gallery, a meet-and-greet
The schools may have aid to offer the poorer students, but the poorer kids probably never even consider going to one of these schools, simply because they cost so much before any aid would be awarded. If the student doesn't think they would be able to afford to go to the local state school, they aren't even going to consider moving across the country to attend an ivy league school. And would their teachers or guidance counselors even suggest to these students that they could possibly go to one of these schools and know that there might be ways for it to be affordable. The schools having the endowments and donations to use are great, but not sure if those that should know about them actually do know about them.
The European model seems infinitely better. University is free or near-free, but it is also more strict and rigorous. You get in based on academic merit, and even then, you flunk a few classes and you are out. In the US, as long as you keep giving the school money, you can fail as many classes as you want. European universities also generally do not have sports teams, they are purely academic institutions, as they should be.
As for those who do not get into university or do not want to go, they are still given plenty of alternatives by the state to make something of themselves if they wish. There are trade schools and apprenticeships for almost any career, and they are also free.
In the US, everyone is encouraged to go university, and it is pounded into children's heads as early as middle school. In fact, middle school and high school curriculums are designed in such a way so as to simply serve precursors to college. This only puts undue stress on kids who are not fit for college, and who would be the ones going to trade schools in places such as Europe.
All this is because in America, colleges and universities are for-profit businesses. Naturally, they are doing everything possible to get as many people to attend their school, but in turn, this only diminishes the value of university education.
math is always math even in the Ivy League & facts are facts
This is what one of my physics professors would always say (and she was a graduate of and former professor at MIT). The only difference is the competition between students, but the opportunities are the same. It's up to the students to take advantage of them.
The study basically concluded that the name of the university on your diploma matters a lot and an argument can be made that if desperately poor people can get into expensive top schools and run up mountains of debt, the odds are in their favor that they'll earn more than people who went to cheaper universities. This whole debate about the disadvantages poor applicants have is beside the point.
No one is surprised that kids from wealthier means do better in school. This is well documented. What's the performance gap between the bottom 60% and the top 1% kids? If the gap is sizable, let's look towards correcting that. If the gap in performance is negligible, then I'm going to get more interested in these findings.
Not just that, but those with means have much more opportunity to do the exceptional things so-called elite colleges are looking for. Feeder schools with high rates of getting pupils into elite schools are a thing for a reason. An average kid with means is still much more likely to have an outstanding resume than an exceptional one student from a more modest background.
Apologists will say admissions at these places are money blind, but the reality is they just use proxies. It's the class equivalent of saying 'I'm not racist, but I won't hire people with funny names like Jose, Latasha, or Ahmed.'
The old saying 'Elite schools are where the wealthy launder privilege into credentials' once again holds true, and still no one cares. No one is holding them accountable for their classism. Point it out and some asshole accuses you of 'class warfare.' Far as I'm concerned, their should be an academic boycott of these places until conditions improve. It is baffling to me that, for all the progressives in academia, no one wants to touch this subject.
AFAIK, schools like MIT (or my alma mater Caltech), are the exceptions that proves the rule. Single dimensional focus on academics (e.g., STEM) might be *one* way to get into an "elite" school that has a narrow focus, but isn't really going to get you very far in an admissions pool at Harvard, or Stanford.
Except that MIT sees thousands more applicants than there are spaces - and all those applicants have 4.0s and all those applicants have won science fairs. The applicant that has that and has also written/acted/played an instrument/etc. is going to stand out.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The application alone is sometimes a barrier for kids who haven't been prepared for the demands of some top schools. It's been a while since I filled out college applications, but Harvard's was at least straightforward - common application, addendum, essay, recommendations, and alumni interview. Anyone can complete it and get rejected. Others were an endless maze of abstract essay questions seemingly designed to keep out anyone who didn't think the right way or have the right strengths and experiences. The further schools diverge from a common application format, the more kids, no matter how qualified, will pass them over.
FWIW, college applications are much more straightforward today. Most schools** use the common application platform with a generally few addendums like the dreaded essays. Today, it is easier than ever to apply to as many schools as you have the time and patience to do. Of course making a 1/2-assed application to a school is probably a waste of time and money, the historical hoops you are referring to are largely non-existent today.
**including all Ivy Leagues (e.g., Harvard), Stanford, etc (with the notable exception of MIT).
So, decisions/involvement/circumstances for the parents and household when the student is ten years old ultimately impact if that student, eight years later, will have the prerequisites to compete at an elite college. Poor parents, single parents, parents that end up with stressors that prevent them from committing the time and attention to their child's upbringing will, on average, harm that child's educational performance and will lead to reduced opportunities simply because the student does not have the academic basis in order to attend these schools.
Excellant points. Parental involvement and understanding of the college entrance "game" will always be a big factor in who applies and who gets in, and that probably correlates better with income than say a students potential to succeed in college. Applying to college can be daunting, and if you don't have a parent who has been through the process and have a school that is geared to getting kids in college it will be much more difficult. Add in the perception that "college is so expensive that we can't afford it" even though many schools will provide enough financial aid to make it affordable and you have a double whammy, plus if you don't see many kids going to college from your neighborhood you may not even have expectations of going to college.
You hit the nail on the head when you said the challenge is reaching these kids early in the educational process; but that takes money we as a nation seem unwilling to invest.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
For a regular school, particularly state school, then yes it gets stacked a lot by test scores and other academic indicators. The better you do academically, the more they are interested in you and the more money they'll try to give you to get you to attend.
However the "elite" schools have a whole bunch of good old boy shit going on. If you look at admissions in to places like Harvard you find that there are some legitimately top performers who come in, but a whole lot who are not and are instead connected some way. They are kids of alums, politically connected, rich, whatever. They are the "right kind of people" and so get the invite.
That's also the reason why parents want kids to go there is the connections. You don't get a better education at Harvard overall. Any university with a good program will do at least as well, and in plenty of disciplines there are schools ranked far better. However it further gets you in to the old boys club and gets you connections to people that gets your opportunities that would not otherwise be available later in life.
The application alone is sometimes a barrier for kids who haven't been prepared for the demands of some top schools...
FWIW, college applications are much more straightforward.... Today, it is easier than ever to apply to as many schools as you have the time and patience to do.
Time, patience, and money. Colleges have application fees. A student with, say, a ten percent chance of acceptance into an elite school who applies to ten will have good odds to make it in. If you're from a well-to-do family, paying ten seventy-five dollar application fees are the least important part of this. If you're not so well to do, however, you might apply to one elite school, but after that, your back-up application will be to the local State school. http://www.usnews.com/educatio...
Also, things like SAT tests cost money, too. Not to mention SAT prep classes, which the rich will buy as a matter of course and the poor have no access to.
Except some poor and middle class kids get into Harvard -- in fact they get their expenses paid. That's not the case for Bugattis.
And it's for a good (or at least shrewd) reason: Letting the intellectual elite into your exclusive school lends the prestige of their academic accomplishments to the financial elite who attend.
Look at our president-elect, who likes to point to his attendance at Penn as proof that he has a very good brain. Well, I'm not one of those people who think he's actually stupid but he got into Penn because he was rich and had family connections in the admissions office. He's not in the same league as the kids who get into Penn on a scholarship.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If the Endowment is large enough they can give every student free tuition.
Don't think you understand how the top universities work. Tuition doesn't matter at all; all that matters is f you are connected enough to get in. They are "diverse" in ways that do not matter, but shun true diversity such as economic or political diversity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even the summary indicates that these schools bend over backwards to accommodate their poor students. ...
They do-- but there are barriers which have already filtered poorer students out long before the acceptance/rejection decision by the college.
Money is a form of resources that can be used to solve problems. If the problem addressed is "how do I get my kid accepted into an elite university?"-- having money helps a lot in trying to solve that problem.
Thread.
Is it "fair" that people who don't apply to a college (or job) are underrepresented at that college/job? Yes, of course if fucking is! Why is this even an issue?
You're technically right, but the big factor at the crux of the matter is the if they get in part. Paying the way for 'one of the good ones' doesn't mean there is not still a huge classism problem in these schools.
What you say is not universally true. Good U.S. universities do fail students out. And why not? There are plenty of qualified applicants to replace them, it's not like the university is going to miss any income.
I've also never head that European universities were "more strict and rigorous". All that I've ever heard about that system is that students tend to stay in it for a long time since it's so easy to sort of float through with a minimal courseload year after year. It doesn't cost anything so why not just keep going as long as you're young and it's still fun to hang around with other college kids?
Cool story bro.
Oh, I actually picked five things true of my own kids. But good to know they are in some book.
You should really be thanking Reagan and Bush Sr for kickstarting the trend. Bush Jr. and Obama merely did nothing to halt it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Precisely. For poor families, things like buying the train tickets or a car to be even able to get there, being able to pay for the accommodation and other resources, can already be a challenge.
I was struggling to pay for my train rides and my accommodation here in Europe, even without paying any University fees. I couldn't count on my parents to support me financially.
As a father planning for his children's education, many years hence. I go to these schools websites and look at their tuition. It is beyond all reason for all but the very wealthiest. My house doesn't cost that much. And I have two children. So yes, unless their academics are far beyond the pale and their SAT scores are maxed out, I'd discourage them from applying.
Never judge the cost of a college by the posted tuition fees. Schools give lots of financial aid. The only people that actually pay the posted rates are the people who can look at those numbers and not even flinch at the thought of them.
The high posted rates serve one purpose - to shift some expenses toward the really rich people that attend. Most people will get some form of financial aid, usually knocking off a large portion of the expense.
The high base rate + lots of aid available approach lets them shift more of the cost to the students with plenty of money and cut more breaks for those with less money.
This just in - Humans with more resources are using those resources to make sure that they and their progeny have more resources. Story at 10!
There's nothing wrong with rich people wanting to give their own kids a leg-up in life and the best chance for future success that they can.
There's plenty wrong when society suppresses social mobility and makes success in life tied to how rich one's parents are.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Paying the way for 'one of the good ones' doesn't mean there is not still a huge classism problem in these schools.
Of course. But the problem is NOT that they are qualified but can't afford it. The problem is that they are not qualified. So the solution is not "more aid" or "more loans" but maybe fixing inequality in K-12.
Imo @ least, it doesn't matter WHERE YOU GO TO COLLEGE
Unfortunately, yours isn't the only opinion that matters - there's a LOT of elitist college snobbery out there, especially among companies that can afford to be picky. Not that you'll be unable to find a job, but there are a lot of doors that will still be closed to you - so it does matter, although going to the university of bubba doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be living in a refrigerator box.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
... note that there's many more rich people than their used to be. (But, also more poor people, thanks Obama and Bush).
Wrong. It started with Nixon and accelerated under Reagan.
Prior to Reagan, the median income was 28% of the median of the top 1%
After Reagan, it was 18%
thanks to his two recessions (82-83 and 87) the number of poor, defined as 1/3 or less of the median, doubled
And wages, stagnated or fell in every Republican administration since.
Wages under Obama ARE rising.
Who is prepared to bet that will end?
Jesus, the comments on this story are killing me.
1. We don't need a country full of college graduates. You don't need a college degree for most things.
2. Ignore all the "We need STEM graduates" for a minute. This country does have a shortage, and it's TRADESMEN. Somewhere along the line, going to vocational school wasn't cool anymore, working with your hands wasn't cool anymore, learning a trade wasn't cool anymore - because everyone wants to go to college and learn something mostly useless for the promise of a cushy job. Plumbers, eletricians, welding shops, mechanics and an entire slew of trade shops are closing up because they can't get apprentices, and eventually the craftsmen retire. No one wants to start off making minimum wage and learning how to do something useful - go do an apprenticeship, become a journeyman, earn their way to a useful skill because everyone is convinced that they need to go to college - if for NO OTHER REASON than to get a degree in basketweaving, simply to check a box that they have a degree.
Hell, my wife works at GE - where you need a box checked for "college degree" for anything beyond the lowest of positions - regardless of experience. Ridiculous.
3. I'd like to remind all the SJWs that equal opportunity does not result in equal results. Don't ask for the former when you're asking for the latter.
4. Fitting in is ridiculous. "My daughter won't go to Pepperdine because she can't afford an $800 backpack." That is the most ridiculous thing I've read on the internet today, and I don't sympathize. You don't go to school to fit in; you go to advance your education. Friends are nice, but secondary.
5. The military still exists. And all the branches pay for school. You get PAID to go to school. And if you're particularly ambitious, there are service academies. I went to one of them - and that's as Ivy league as it gets, as selective as it gets, with academic rigors that make Harvard look like community college.
I didn't come from a rich family, or a poor family - I came from no family as an orphan; a ward of the state, foster homes, group homes, juvenile detention - and I excelled at school because school was SAFE. Teachers didn't beat me or molest me, and I was too young to understand the intricacies of what was happening to me or why it was wrong, I absorbed school from the beginning - I wanted to be there as long as I could be. It hurt my feelings that I didn't "belong" because other kids has packed lunch or school lunch, and I picked through the trash for food and kids called me "garbage picker" and laughed at me. But school was safe.
6. To whomever said it, colleges are not the same. "Oh, you went to City Central community college and got a degree in administrative management?" doesn't have the same ring as "You have an engineering degree from West Point (or fill in prestigious academic school of your choice). Colleges aren't about fitting in, or even about what you study, which is - at the end of the day - mostly pointless throughout the rest of your life - with the notable exception that college provides a sounding board to whether:
a. You can get through it and stick with it (which prospective employers care about).
b. Whether you challenge yourself (which prospective employers care about).
c. Whether you've learned academic rigor, or how to ask questions, or how to study (which prospective employers care about).
Some institutions are more well known for their academic rigor than others, which is why ranking systems exist for different fields of study for those institutions. An engineering degree from MIT is more meaningful than an engineering degree from CityCenter Degrees R Us.
And finally...
Rich kids get ahead. Fuck 'em. We'll never be them, but you don't have to be to be successful. You don't have to be rich, or entitled, or endowed to go to a great school or succeed in life. But you have to work hard. Ric
Some schools bend over backwards, but not Stanford. (at least that was the case 25 years ago)
All the places I got accepted to offered a financial aid package that made some sort of sense, albeit still difficult for my family.
What Stanford offered was a joke. It expected me to come up with 12K-per year, and my folks for another 12K ish, which the financial aid forms clearly showed we don't have. (the numbers are fuzzy, but it was all ridiculous.) They were telling me to my face "if you're not rich, no need to apply".
So I went elsewhere. They weren't my first choice anyways.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
high schools with large numbers of low-income students tend to have under-staffed guidance offices
That was my situation last year when my daughter was applying to college. So I spent several thousand on an outside consultant who coached her on SAT techniques, helped her apply, and even co-authored her essays. She got into a very good university that was the best that we could have realistically hoped for. It was money well spent, but not many low income families could afford that.
Using my money to basically buy her way into a good school felt wrong, but when it is your own kid, you do what you gotta do.
Right, but that's a more complex explanation that is essentially the exact point that the original commenter was making.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The applications are easier, the financial aid applications are ridiculous. After doing FAFSA, many of these top-tier schools are asking for more intrusive information than you can imagine, including what savings we have for other children and having to estimate what our income and taxes will be for the next year and the year after. I was getting infuriated with my son's forms, had to dig out old tax records, my wife is self-employed, but doesn't technically own a company (freelance), but they wouldn't accept that as an answer... the financial aid forms take 10x longer to fill out. This might be a great reason why so few poor people are doing them. One of the forms even wanted my voter registration number and date I applied for it. WTF?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Not exactly...
http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/may/14/rob-portman/rob-portman-says-student-loan-money-was-used-cover/
Short version: during an unexpected spasm of fiscal sanity in 2010, the government cut $58B in wasteful fees that were being paid to banks. Of that savings, around $9B was used to shore up the ACA funding. Nearly $10B went to shore up Pell grants. While it's true that more of those cost savings could (and probably should) have been passed onto students drowning in debt, it's not like there's a line item on your Navient statement that reads "ACA Surcharge".
Yet we know that the best students normally come from the most costly homes. The children of the rich are exposed to far more advantageous items and experiences from toys to tutors to travel and there is also an expectation that a child from rich parents will be driven to compete with his family's income history. At the very least that means that children from normal families will have to be unusually diligent and dedicated to achieving academic superiority. That is fairly rare. Although I do maintain that a true scholar is almost unstoppable. From time to time we see geniuses blooming from wretched schools and miserable backgrounds. Einstein was sort of like that. Imagine the attitude in Germany that he had to live with before he immigrated to the US. Jews were hated and mistrusted in his era.
There's also some self selecting. I know I didn't even bother to apply to Stanford because I assumed that somewhere along the line we wouldn't have money for it unless there was a 4 or 5 year long complete scholarship. Others thought I was crazy. But it is a scary thought to think that you might have to change schools halfway through.
The math part is important too. I was probably first or second in my class, especially in math and science, but we didn't have calculus. I had pre-calculus but nothing to do the next year without spending half the day at a nearby junior college, which was only offered every other year. Neighboring schools did offer this. I know at least for Cal-tech that I know I would not be admitted without transferring from another college after catching up. So combine that with financial worries, and that means sticking to the state universities (which are top rated of course). Also Stanford didn't have an undergraduate computer science program at the time, oddly enough.
The irony though is that I knew a lot of students at my univerisity from one of the top high schools in the country who all tested out of beginning calculus class because their elite high schools offered it. But every single one of them struggled with diving straight into the later class without any buffering. None of them graduated sooner than other students. So my feeing is that advanced placement is highly overrated and does nothing but maybe get you an extra scholarship if you're lucky.
The high posted rates serve one purpose - to shift some expenses toward the really rich people that attend
I'm aware of this, but you see the dilemma it creates. It creates a very strong "What's in your wallet" mentality, where the most important criteria for a child's acceptance at these places is how much their parents are willing to pay or have saved up vs. what the school thinks their parents should be able to pay or should have saved. Suffice it to say that most people in the world, even those that might have saved up sufficient money, would consider this amount of money to be mind bogglingly large, and it will directly affect when we can retire and possibly affect siblings options. We're in a strange position of trying to show that our wallet is not empty, but not full and figure out how much to volunteer that will get the kid accepted without going over. It's like the price is right.
Now, to the value. A middle class parent will want to focus on options that significantly improve the marketability of their children's skill-set, no other factors come in to play (no one particularly values a liberal education or spending money on anything without an ROI). Couple that with Ivy League schools general dis-utility in most professions, yes, as a parent I would actively discourage my child from applying or even thinking about it, from a young age. I need my kids to get the education they need to get a good job, that pays well more than the median. No other factors are involved here from my stand-point.
Exceptions: certain ivy league law and business schools, or, if I utterly fail at parenting, a child who wants to pursue some liberal arts field (that's not a fine art) and has an excellent academic record I may agree to fund, under very strong conditions. Basically if you cannot place in the top 10% of your class, every year, I'm cutting you off until you find a cheaper school and pick up a utility degree that will at least let you get a job that doesn't involve hamburgers or coffee.
So with all that said, I can understand why they don't see applications for a lot of people outside the 1%. While I haven't seen anyone put their thoughts into this topic into a serious condensed form, this is the prevailing attitude I think. We're just not seeing why we should pay so much money for so little practical return, and we're not wealthy enough to remotely consider the impractical return.
"They do not consider money or othewise having an ability to pay when students apply"
Poor people might be stupid and bad with money, but even they know that if their parents live in a trailer that they cannot afford several hundred thousands dollars in education costs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Just because they are poor does not mean they will beg for money.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Says the person playing games with medians rather than looking at numbers of people.
Of the leftist persuasion. Can you say "cognitive dissonance"?
No more than it is "surprising" that the wealthy live much longer than the poor, another statistic that is in need of dramatic adjustment. Bring back 91% marginal tax brackets while providing universal health care and education.
The "dumb luck" is to be born to a rich set of parents. The poster children for this example is George W. and Neil Bush. The one kept getting handed multimillion dollar businesses to run into the ground, and the other "just happened" to have a couple of women knock his his hotel room door, looking to have sex with him.
Poor kids who do everything right dont do better than rich kids who do everything wrong
Maybe, as that change has been attributable to an increase in dietary iodine. However it's also said that human intelligence is analogous to the tail feathers on a peacock, and since arranged marriages stopped being a thing in the west ever since world war 2, and faster/more affordable travel allows for a much broader mate selection, it's possible that we're inadvertently subjecting ourselves to selective selection instead of the more arbitrary selection we had before. This would also help explain the higher autism rates, which nobody has been able to pinpoint a cause for (and no, it's not vaccines.)
Want to be more than a burger flipper - you best embark on a self-improvement project, years before you can walk into an R movie, to get educated. Get a degree in a field that pays a real wage, or get comfortable flipping burgers.
Unless that field collapses, or gets offshored, or there's a glut of other grads, or you discover you just cannot do linear algebra no matter how hard you try - well then you're an idiot for taking out student loans you couldn't afford.
Colleges began as a place for the rich to network. Trade schools were or the working class. Dont expect an Ivy to teach technical skills. They are all about the networking and hence of value to those who have enough inherited wealth to not need a backup.
**Life is too short to be serious**
If I cannot use my wealth to give my children an advantage what is the point of the wealth? Why work hard and earn money if someone who doesnt will get the same opportunities for their kid.
Ye society should try to keep the ladder open for social mobility as smart kids can be born to poor parents and we would not want to lose their potential but the kids of wealthy parents have already got a track record so their is nothing wrong in society giving an advantage to the chidren of successfull folks. If really smart poor kids will catch up in 2 or 3 generations.
**Life is too short to be serious**
To lower the cost of education:
1) Colleges should let students earn certificates in their field of study. (This is in contrast to a BS degree, which requires both the major field classes, and also "General Education (GE)" classes.) Let the certificate students take only the classes related to their major, if that's what they prefer. That would save the students the time and money of the GE classes, and it would free up the GE classes for other students.
2) Employers should be open to the idea of students learning in a non-traditional setting. Here's one way to ensure that the job applicant has learned what they need to know: Companies can form a "Testing Group". In this group of companies, managers and heads of departments can send in test questions. These are questions on subjects that they care about, not necessarily standard textbook questions. Build up collections of these questions. Then when I apply for a job, I take a test of these questions. The software running the test can choose a random question on the subject of scope, and a random question on the subject of security, etc.
3) Find out how the schools are spending their money. Trump should hire three people to write questions about the finances of colleges and universities. The people should be: an expert on the subject of college finances, a CPA, and a lawyer. First clearly define terms (what is a "part-time student"?). Then ask 20 or 30 questions about school operations and finances. How many students, how many teachers, how many dollars, etc. Make the schools answer these questions for each of the last 25 years, so that we can see trends in spending. The answers to the questions must be signed by the school president, and by the school's chief financial officer.
Let the school write a verbal explanation of its numbers, if they want to, but I want to see those numbers.
After the US government gets the answers from a school, it puts the answers on the Internet. The government should set up the web page so that you can compare one school to another. Also it puts the answers into files that you can download, so that you can do your own analysis. (Put the numbers into CSV, SQL INSERT INTO statements, and JavaScript statements that set the numbers into variables.)
After posting the information for a particular school, the federal government can't authorize any aid for that school for 30 days. During the 30 days, the government, public, and newspapers can read the numbers ("They're spending that much on the bureaucracy?!?"). The government might demand that the school change its spending, before the government gives it any more aid.
Also have a similar set of questions for the statewide bureaucracy (state regents, chancellors, trustees, etc.), including the salaries, perks such as free housing, and retirement pay of these people.
Unfortunately for your position on it, schools like Harvard seem to enjoy the exact opposite of an academic boycott; researchers aspire to associate with these schools.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I took AP Calc in high school but I'm not usually all that good at standardized tests, my results on the AP exam were poor enough that I took it in college again the following year. Even what theoretically was the same curriculum was challenging, they're definitely not exactly the same. I can see how a kid that assumes that he or she did learn everything would be in trouble if they skipped the first-semester class.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They come to my house, I go to their houses, we invite each other to social functions. Maybe it had something to do with surviving school together. I don't know. Since HS we've all made and lost lots of money, a few times. I can't say any has made as much as their parents, but in most if not all cases, that would be difficult
Let's review this list of reasons:
* divorce is inversely correlated with wealth - actually I doubt this is even true
* probably working only one job - really, why is this? Not true where I live
* Healthier diet - indeed, cheap food is not so good
* Parents value an education more - actually, the ones that seem to value it most are recent immigrants
* Neighborhood with higher property values means better funded schools - stupid way to fund schools, they should be funded according to need (check Finland, etc)
So only two points of 5 seems likely to be true, and the most important one, the funding, is the product of a really bad system.
I think the educations system needs a bit of a review. I'm sure Trump will fix that ... cough.
"Cats like plain crisps"
The applications are easier, the financial aid applications are ridiculous. After doing FAFSA, many of these top-tier schools are asking for more intrusive information than you can imagine, including what savings we have for other children and having to estimate what our income and taxes will be for the next year and the year after. I was getting infuriated with my son's forms, had to dig out old tax records, my wife is self-employed, but doesn't technically own a company (freelance), but they wouldn't accept that as an answer... the financial aid forms take 10x longer to fill out. This might be a great reason why so few poor people are doing them. One of the forms even wanted my voter registration number and date I applied for it. WTF?
I hate to break it to you, but so-called "poor" folks probably just have a handful of W2's, a couple of bank account, and maybe a 401K or two which probably means what is an intrusive examinations of finances for you, is probably just checking a few "Not Applicable" boxes on a form for them.
Thread.
Is it "fair" that people who don't apply to a college (or job) are underrepresented at that college/job? Yes, of course if fucking is! Why is this even an issue?
Is the college treating applicants "fairly"? Maybe so.
Is society being "fair"? Debatable.
The NYT article spends a lot of time focusing on the 1% vs 60%, but that wasn't the focus of the original study by the Equality of Opportunity Project. Their conclusion was that graduates of an elite school had approximately the same chance to get into the top 20% income bracket regardless of their economic background.
Exceptions: certain ivy league law and business schools, or, if I utterly fail at parenting, a child who wants to pursue some liberal arts field (that's not a fine art) and has an excellent academic record I may agree to fund, under very strong conditions. Basically if you cannot place in the top 10% of your class, every year, I'm cutting you off until you find a cheaper school and pick up a utility degree that will at least let you get a job that doesn't involve hamburgers or coffee.
So your child somehow manages the amazing accomplishment of being accepted to an Ivy league school, and your ultimatum condition on them is that they must place at the top 10% in an Ivy league school or you cut them off? You know that fully 1/2 of the students they are competing against are in the top 1% of all college prospects, right?
So with all that said, I can understand why they don't see applications for a lot of people outside the 1%. While I haven't seen anyone put their thoughts into this topic into a serious condensed form, this is the prevailing attitude I think. We're just not seeing why we should pay so much money for so little practical return, and we're not wealthy enough to remotely consider the impractical return.
Well I can certainly see why they are unlikely to see an application from one of your kids... Certainly there isn't a compelling reason to spend your hard earned money to send your kids to an Ivy if you don't think it's worth the money (it is your money after all).
The question you should be asking yourself, though, is are your holding your kid back, or helping them make a better decision. Sometimes, the answer isn't obvious even if you think about it very deeply. I'm not saying this applies to you, but I've found (after talking to 100's of parents about college choices for their students over many years), parents often don't seem to have sufficient insights into their kids makeup to probably the answer this question very objectively, yet conversely, intelligent kids often seem to be quite sensitive to their parents financial position on college support and willing to sell themselves short. Sad but true.
Not having gone to any Ivy, I don't know myself, but I know several folks who have and apparently this is some value there in making it to the *next-level* of certain careers, or getting certain opportunities in business or government service. Unfortunately, it is also obvious that all this intangible value is only available to those students that have certain intangible talents to get the value from the opportunities to attend such an elite school. That isn't everyone and it would be a shame to waste the money on the school if the student doesn't have those intangible talents (unless you have money to burn).
If I cannot use my wealth to give my children an advantage what is the point of the wealth?
There is plenty of "point in wealth", I guarantee if they made equal schools across the country in poor and rich neighborhoods alike you wouldn't burn your pay-cheque and go live as a pauper.
Why work hard and earn money if someone who doesnt will get the same opportunities for their kid.
To set an example? For your own self-fulfillment?
If a kid is born to lazy parents- does that mean he deserves to be uneducated and have fewer opportunities? Just because his parents were lazy- or even stupid? If your child was swapped with another child at birth in the hospital, with that of the child of a poor family.
Would the child you lost suddenly have less worth to the world because now, he would grow up with different parents? Would he be less deserving of an education than if he had come home with you?
Ye society should try to keep the ladder open for social mobility as smart kids can be born to poor parents and we would not want to lose their potential but the kids of wealthy parents have already got a track record so their is nothing wrong in society giving an advantage to the chidren of successfull folks. If really smart poor kids will catch up in 2 or 3 generations.
I think it's admirable for a parent to want the best for their child to succeed. I'm certainly going to do the best I can for my children and my children as a result are going to be better off than those from poor families. I'm not saying you shouldn't use your wealth to give your children every advantage you can. It's your responsibility as a parent.
Conversely, the responsibility of society is to give equal opportunity to all people, irrespective of their parent's wealth. Society should try and even the playing field to give each child a chance to succeed, that's part of the logic behind public schools (the other part being, we're all better off living in a society of educated people rather than uneducated people).
Poor families grow up in poor neighborhoods. Poor neighborhoods generate less property tax, which in most states is how schools are funded. Poorly funded schools get the worst teachers, the worst facilities, etc. Even if poor families had the same rate of two-parent households, or the same rate of enthusiasm for learning that richer families had. Even if the kids in poorer families got enough proper nutrition to develop brain growth (lack of nutrition strongly linked to lower intelligence). Even if their home lives were perfect- they still have the disadvantage of going to crappy schools where the other students aren't as focused, the teachers are worse, and the facilities are crap.
If a child is up for adoption with a rich family and a poor family. That same child with the same initial potential, will be much more likely to succeed if a rich family adopts him rather than if a poor family adopts him. Instead of studying law, he could be pushing meth.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Let's review this list of reasons:
* divorce is inversely correlated with wealth - actually I doubt this is even true
By it's very nature, having one parent providing funds is going to make your less well off than having two parents providing funds. A lot of the kids growing up in poverty in this nation have several siblings each, all from different fathers, none of them involved in their life.
* probably working only one job - really, why is this? Not true where I live
Really? Doctors and Lawyers where you live are just as likely to have a night/weekend job to have to pay bills as the waitresses working at the Waffle House? That's interesting.
* Parents value an education more - actually, the ones that seem to value it most are recent immigrants
This is true, and children of immigrants tend to move up the socio-economic ladder too because of this. It's also true, if your parent went to University, he's more likely to push you to achieve the same compared to the parent who dropped out of beauty school.
* Neighborhood with higher property values means better funded schools - stupid way to fund schools, they should be funded according to need (check Finland, etc)
I agree completely. I think this is a big issue, and also a low hanging fruit that would be easy to fix.
I think the educations system needs a bit of a review. I'm sure Trump will fix that ... cough.
He will set up Trump Elementary, Trump Middle, and Trump High schools all across this country- to help prepare students for Trump University.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Colleges began as a place for the people that were going to run the country to get educations that enabled them to learn from the greater body of human knowledge in a multitude of fields. That's why there's an emphasis on humanities and other social aspects that seem out-of-step with the technical aspects, to try to instill a degree of social responsibility to those whose later decisions may have societal impacts far beyond their own households.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I just thought your post was kind of a rant, hard to read, and pretty much in the line of "I want to tell people my story" kind of post. I thought it was funny to post my response. But whatever, it's the internet, people post dumb shit all the time, you and me included.
There are several reasons. I've read and you can google it, that one reason of increased autism rates is because people are waiting to get married, and usually find a mate in their career or field. So a lot of these people are marrying other intelligent people that probably have low level aspergers or other autistic genes which leads to more autistic kids. I have also recently read a study linking low iron to autism in babies, so older people having kids are absorbing less vitamins in general and probably eating poorly (just working people problems) and not getting enough nutrients. Combine smart working older people that have no time to cook and eat healthily and you get a boost in autism. There's also the fact that autism is ridiculously broad nowadays to add in more people now being diagnosed as well.
You are talking about what is fair for the child. I am talking about what is fair for the parents. 2 different aspects. You might want to be fair to all kids but the fact remains if people are not going to get a benefit from wealthy what is their motivation to work hard?
**Life is too short to be serious**
So, i see you can't do Present Value to account for the compound growth. You lose.
So you're one of those wankers who starts babbling on about something heard in the first year stats class he had to drop out of, when Bill Gates walks into a room.
That's all I have - no investments besides my 401k, no other property besides my house... WTF do they need my voter registration for?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Says the H.S. dropout who has no idea what a Median is!
You wish. Either you're utterly incompetent, or you're a "liars figure" sophist. I'll leave you to your bubble now.