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A comment on U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to cost $100k per year. Parent comment

Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by eindiran on Monday November 04, 2019 @02:26PM (#21445394)
Given that most (yes, most) students at the University of Chicago receive financial aid, what you're seeing is a sticker price. The school is using the high sticker price + financial aid to perform very efficient price discrimination[0], so they can get a lot of money from people who can pay.

It is effectively a sliding scale fee [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees

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Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by jjeaff on Monday November 04, 2019 @10:15PM (#21449280)
That is part of it, but the term "financial aid" is usually trotted around to make people think that the less wealthy are getting "aid" but in reality, the majority of that "aid" is in the form of non-dischargeable student loans.

I don't consider a loan "aid". Especially since that loan has interest.

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Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by secabeen on Monday November 04, 2019 @06:33PM (#21447930)
Yes, this. The nameplate tuition is paid by a vanishingly small percentage of students. What I think each school should do is publish data showing what the median tuition paid is, and the quartiles. That would help a lot to fight this perception that "tuition is going up every year!"
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Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by popularwarfare on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:40PM (#21449099)
In theory. Do you have evidence that is what is actually happening?
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Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by eindiran on Monday November 04, 2019 @10:59PM (#21449474)
If your request for evidence is about the claim that most Uchicago students receive aid: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/financial-aid-budget-forecas...

If its about the claim that this is an example of price discrimination: that is an opinion I formed while I was at the University and spoke with some folks in the economics department about it. There is a class offered in econ about the economics of education, and that certainly hit the point home that financial aid is a type of price discrimination. I couldn't have paid for the tuition in full, so I myself received significant financial aid and supplemented with some student loans, so I got to see a bit of it first hand.

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Re:U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to... by skinnymuch on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @07:18AM (#21451682)
They are mixing financial support/debt and grants it seems in the writing. Getting loans isn’t the same as getting money you don’t have to pay back.
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