https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/12301...
Others have followed suit - Northwestern recently announced that they would just grant financial aid recipients whatever part previously would have been loans.
When I was applying to college in early 2010s as someone who received financial aid (parents made ~$100k total), I could attend:
* [top 20 school - private] for ~18k a year
* [top 50 school - private] for ~18k a year
* [sub 200-rank school - the main in-state school] for ~$9k a year
* [top 20 to top 40 schools - state - out of state] for $30k-$40k...
These big state schools were the most surprising to me because everyone always says "if you're smart they'll have so many scholarships for you it'll nearly be free!"
But when it came down to it the good state schools weren't even in the running. I took the more prestigious school name for half the price.
I knew a dude who did community college in Northern VA (NVCC) and transferred to Cornell. Shaved off a lot of costs, got a scholarship, and walked out with an Ivy League diplo. All of those hills were good for his leg strength, too.
Unfortunately, I'm still paying for being mediocre in my high school years!
Liberal arts college rankings aren't comparable to large university rankings. There are thousands of them, and many have specialized niches.
You need to adjust your scale when looking at colleges versus universities, and even then USNWR rankings are a crude metric if you are interested in a specific program.
Also, the idea that "elite professional service firms" and Ivy/Ivy-tier Universities have similar selection criteria doesn't seem at all surprising to me. But I don't think that's a model that's appropriate or useful for most HN readers.
It's a more prestigious school than their USNWR ranking would indicate. Reed refuses to fill out the USNWR yearly survey, and is ranked lower because of it.
And Steve Jobs went there, but he dropped out.
For that matter, my local community college system offers _guaranteed admission_ to several respected (and selective) universities. I.e., not only _can_ you do two years at community college and transfer to one of these more prestigious universities for a four-year degree, you can enroll in programs that guarantee it. (And several schools apparently found this useful enough to actively create a pipeline for it.)
Which means that in the city I live in, if both parents work full time minimum wage jobs, their child might be able to go for free, since the minimum wage here is $15. It would even be slightly harder if the parents worked in San Francisco, since minimum wage is a few cents more there. I doubt anyone in that situation feels like that minimum wage is making it easy to live in the area.
Programs meant to accept people from across the nation that peg goals/limits to specific income amounts don't seem to make all that much sense to me. :/
There are thresholds and guidelines, but in my experience financial aid officers have a lot of flexibility and discretion. They look at the complete picture, including assets, number of other siblings that are dependents/in college, etc.
You can also appeal the financial aid decision, and just going to that trouble will often get you a bit more aid if you have a decent reason.
The depressing part was how many people obviously lie and misrepresent their financial situation to try to cheapen their student's aid cost. Not that I can really blame them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand. And there's basically no risk to trying, the aid officers just look at it and are like "obvious lie, rejected" or "possible lie, ask for supporting evidence/documents".
At a high enough income level, is it out of hand? If the parents' income is, say 7 figures per year, why not charge even more, and in doing so increase the assistance to those making closer to the median household income?
Simple solutions like this readily suggest themselves. However, iiuc, in top-tier universities, tuition doesn't seem to be the significant proportion of revenues, so increasing fees wouldn't really enable anything and might have diminishing returns. For Harvard in 2019[0], the sources of revenue were:
- Philanthropy : 43%
- Research: 17%
- "Other": 18%
- Tuition: 22%
Also:
- number of students nationally has plateaued.
- tuition costs have reached limits of affordability.
[0]: https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy19_harvard_fin...
I just think that
1) the price tag is inflated in the first place
2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings and I can understand the reaction to try to cut the corners a bit.
Inflated relative to what? The cost of providing the education? Or relative to its perceived value? The latter ultimately dictates the price. Perhaps $70k is the point after which really wealthy people say rebel and refuse to send their children there, regardless of how small a portion of their wealth it is?
> 2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings
I agree, which is why I wonder why the $70k limit for those well above the income level where it stings.
Then again, a higher top-level tuition depends a lot on the distribution of very wealthy parents whose kids attend Harvard vs the just upper middle class (there is a large difference between the income/wealth those two groups after all, bigger than between the middle and upper middle-class, given the exponential shape of the wealth distribution curve).
And perhaps the very wealthy (let's say in today's terms net worth in the mid 10 millions and up) already make significant donations to the University, so it would be meaningless to raise tuition to i.e. $90k in that case.
Affordable, to me, was in-state tuition at $3,000 per semester at a state school, with a few community college classes. This was mixed with scholarships, and my parents subsidizing books and on campus living some semesters as that could more than double the cost of tuition.
Are you saying that Harvard could have arbitrarily and unilaterally spit out a number close to that? And routinely does for people whose parents make more than $65,000?
My comp sci degree has the same utility as anyone else that didn't go to Ivy League / Stanford.
I'm not arguing that Harvard isn't expensive for affluent families, but even with an income like that you would still probably get financial aid. Harvard doesn't charge anything like full tuition to families under $200k a year, the point is just that they charge nothing at all if you make under $65k.
I fail to see how that is unfair.
Harvard’s assumption that the parents can shill out tens of thousands for their kid is just dumb. They don’t realistically take into account parents that don’t care much about education, large families, parents with lots of debt, etc.
That said, yes, if you have more money left over per child than someone else, you are expected to pay more.
I also asked a specific question, which you completely skipped, while doubling down on a fairness argument that this thread wasn't even about. You act knowledgeable in the matter and then aren't able to dive in, only defend your position. Its fine to say "I don't know", but right now what are you doing?
Were you saying that Harvard's "affordability" was anywhere close to the $3,000 tuition / semester I ended up paying? And that's because Harvard routinely makes up any number based on a variety of financial variables (which aren't as simple as "income") and ultimately feelings?
Household income of parents is obviously a bit of weird proxy for an almost-adult child. But, I bet it works quite well at finding academically inclined people who assumed they couldn't afford X University and persuading them that they can.
The alternative would probably be something like requiring all parents to buy "education insurance" for their children, which turns into a lump sum at 18, and then giving people with lower incomes a discount on that insurance. (This is a terrible idea, don't do it. Make education cheap or free instead.)
Based on my experience going from one state school to another, there can be a night and day difference in access between even state schools. I would be shocked if going to any Ivy League school didn't open up many, many doors that are closed to us plebs.
I wonder why not many Americans go study abroad, if studying in their own country is so incredibly expensive and studying abroad can be cheaper and a richer experience. Especially comp sci is taught in English in many non-english speaking countries.
Did you consider going abroad when you were evaluating costs back then?
Thinking about my personal career trajectory, my first job came from an internship set up by my university. A coworker from that job left and pulled me to my second, and when I left there it was because an old classmate referred me to a third.
Had I studied abroad and returned home I would have lacked that network, and that feels like a risk.
Nothing you did in your university was guaranteed and was just as much of a risk.
I don't think non-elite schools offer a noteworthy network, especially for computer science or IT.
There is elite, and then there is everywhere else that's accredited where you just need a sheet of paper with the correct degree name on it.
But yes I've become a fan of what Germany and some other countries offer. I've seen something that made me even more envious: a friend in neighboring Austria was in University there (for free) and it turned out the school was like a sister school to NYU and she wanted to go there and was able to go to NYU for free.
We are really getting the short end of the stick in America right now, amongst developed nations.
How many people stay more or less their whole life in their home town?
Harvard is not “fairly cheap” and likely has something to do with their students largely coming from wealthy families.
Also per that NYT article on wealth at colleges ~15% of Harvard frosh come from the top 1%, so that's a decent chunk of the remaining 45% that clearly don't need aid and likely did not even apply for any.
I doubt you will find many people out there that feel they paid too much for Harvard. Certainly there are bigger fish to fry as far as college tuition rip offs.
I think that's not quite right?
"About 55% of Harvard students receive need-based scholarship aid with average grant totals around $53,000."
I went to a school with this weasel language all over their content. My kid was offered $3k/year in financial aid because the school said I should pay 65% of my annual gross to cover tuition.
It’s nice that they have some token poor and working class, but Harvard is for the rich...
“ According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% of students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households. About 15% come from families in the top 1% of American wealth distribution.” [0]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/it-costs-78200-to-go-to-harv...
> I should pay 65% of my annual gross to cover tuition
Harvard's financial aid is very clear cut and no one would be expected to pay 65% of their gross income.
> 67% of students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households
A household income about about $130,000 is enough to be in the top 20%; how well off you are with that income depends on where you live.
Some high-income families (top 5% of households), with an expensive mortgage and other bills, may have difficulty with paying the full amount, or close to it. Good luck finding sympathy for how those rich people chose to spend their money instead of saving for their child's education.
Sounds to me like a rich person saying “works on my machine.”
This is pretty unrealistic for a family making $130k at the time the first kid hits college to tell them they should have saved more. Especially since tuition is growing faster than inflation or average market returns.
For example, if a family was prescient and knew their kid would get into harvard from conception, and they would have 18 years to save that $200k. If they already made $130k and are fortunate to keep a job all 18 years and if their income grew at the average rate, that’s $15k/year or, assuming they live in NY or CA, about 20% of their net income.
That’s if they only have one kid.
Asking middle class families to forego retirement while 15% of students are in the US 1% is callous.
> For example, if a family was prescient and knew their kid would get into harvard from conception
They wouldn’t have to know they’d get into Harvard but they’d hope their child would go somewhere and at their income level Harvard would be cheaper than many state schools.
Harvard College was not forced by federal policy to dramatically increase their financial aid back when they did. The 2017 tax bill did include a new tax on university endowments tailored to only apply to the wealthiest universities, including Harvard (it has the largest endowment but I'm not sure it's the largest per student).
If you're a hedge fund manager who just retired and is now making $0/yr, sure it's not free.
I wouldn't say "far" more. There are multiple valuable components to a top tier education:
1. Social connections with your peers, as you mention.
2. Social connections with your professors, their graduate students, and their network.
3. The education itself, which should be intellectually challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools)
4. The pedigree, which is a factor of the previous three, and should prove to employers etc that, at minimum, you can handle a large and difficult work load with precision and attention to detail, regardless who your connections are.
5. Various support services tailored to the stresses of a demanding undergraduate education.
Of those, an online education from a top tier school still gets you some of #2 & #5, and all of #3 and #4. A 20-30% tuition discount for losing #1 may be fair, but I think it's still worth it for students who get into a top tier school to finish their degree there, even online.
Your implication that non-STEM fields are less intellectually challenging is pretty insulting. Have you enrolled in a non-STEM degree? Do you have evidence that writing a treatise on comparative literature or archeology is less intellectually challenging than pushing out some code or solving some derivatives? Please choose your words carefully when communicating.
I did a double-degree in Commerce (Finance and Economics), and Computer Engineering at Sydney Uni.
English is my first language, and I've always liked economics/finance. However, I found the commerce side of things much easier to cruise through (I was working full-time as well). The material was easier, contact hours were much less, you could fluff your way through essays (to a degree), and it was obvious many of the students there (i.e. international students) just wanted to finish, and get their degree (nothing wrong with that in itself). Many people didn't bother showing up, and just studied online, and sat the final exam.
Engineering...oh man. The material was tough, the maths was tricky, and there was many mandatory contact hours or mandatory tutorials (> 20 a week). If you didn't show up to weekly classes, you got marked down, which is basically a fail. And while you can fudge an essay in commerce (assuming some basic grasp of first principles), try fudging an answer on Fourier transforms, or gradient-descents. However, many people genuinely had a passion for the subject, and the lecturers/tutors really did push you hard.
Also - look at the dropouts rates for fields - a lot more people dropped out of engineering degrees by year 2/3 versus say, Commerce. I can't speak to other fields/areas.
This experience may not apply to everybody - but as somebody who did a degree in both fields, I think it's telling.
Things like the Sokal Hoax are difficult to impossible in hard STEM fields. Non-STEM fields are more difficult to falsify and thus more difficult to apply similar levels of rigor. Smart and clever undergrads figure out their professors' biases and are constantly submitting lesser versions of the Sokal Hoax for their writing assignments (been there, done that). You can't do that in hard STEM fields, and its more difficult in some logically rigorous soft-STEM ones like law classes. Non-STEM fields tend to be held in the fuzzy-logic-based natural language you grew up with and know intimately, while STEM fields require learning an entirely new language (math, code) where fuzzy logic does not work and precise logic is required. It's more difficult for a variety of reasons.
I also have a mixed education of 1/2 CS and 1/2 Music. I found some of my music classes way harder (and often way more enjoyable) than many of my CS classes, despite the fact that the latter dealt with well-scoped problems.
This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at best, questionable.
And if you were saying that I still disagree. It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
It would really require an in-depth curriculum and grading comparison to answer that question definitively. But one thing I do know from anecdotal experience is that top tier STEM programs carry a stronger expectation that their students not just master a body of knowledge for competent commercial application, but for continued theoretical research. The top tier programs are usually research universities oriented toward making breakthroughs in our understanding of particular fields and driving humanity’s knowledge forward.
Students at normal universities tend to be there to get the grade, get a good GPA, and get a good job. Anecdotally again, I’ve heard professors at such universities complain about that. STEM curriculums at top tier research universities tend to be designed to weed out ones not capable of advancing the state-of-the-art, which is quite a high bar. I’m not sure that standard is applied elsewhere. Though again, would take a comprehensive curriculum and grading comparison to know for sure.
This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since you're not going to interact with professors enough unless you're participating in undergraduate research. And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment.
In my experience professors at top tier research universities encourage and enable this, as one of the most fulfilling parts of their job is finding and grooming future research collaborators. Students are also incentivized since getting jobs or especially into grad school requires strong references from their professors. The extent to which it happens depends primarily on the student’s initiative though.
> And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment.
That’s certainly one of the main problems that needs to be solved by online education, but I believe it’s one of the things everyone will adapt to out of necessity. Professors don’t want to stop grooming promising students for research careers just b/c of an outbreak, so they are finding new ways of doing that online. And we know from some fields like software engineering that remote collaborations are possible, so we’re starting from that point already.
Might the networking value even increase because now there is a shared bond (had to deal with 2020) connecting the less-connected and the more-connected?
A prestigious school like Harvard has all the best professors, all the best resources (libraries, computer labs, machine shops, laboratories), and all the best opportunities (more research positions, more interesting academic work to be done), etc. A small school just can't afford all that stuff.
So you're right that a good school is much more than just the things you learn in class. But to boil that down to some "all the elites go here just to meet the other elites" is closer to a conspiracy theory than the truth.
The undergrads don't see the best professors. The best professors there, as everywhere, often do what they can to evade teaching. Many of the real-world resources are, of course, unavailable online, (computers being a likely exception).
First, Harvard didn't choose this. It happened and its for everyone. Maybe they should offer a 25% discount and cut salaries as well...or just dip in the endowment. What's the point on having it if you don't use for these events?
Second, you're a Harvard grad for life and no one will know or care that 2 years were online (everyone is in the same boat)
About "Harvard grad for life": That's connections -- the ones you make in school, and the ones you can make afterward. But as for intellectual capability? I would argue that college is completely irrelevant after a couple of years in the work force. Or stated another way: if I am interviewing for your second job as an adult, and you are trying to impress me with what you did in college, then something is very off.
I have interviewed job applicants for many years, and the only time I cared about college at all is for kids who just graduated. You have to talk about their college experience because they almost never have anything else relevant. And even in those cases, I don't care at all whether the degree is from an Ivy or a lesser school. I care about what you know, how you think, and your potential for doing good work as revealed by talking about things you worked on in college.
Yes. The grandparent post's contention that this is an elaborate bait and switch is silly. This is decision-making under vast uncertainty. It all sucks, but changing outcomes when some of the dozens of factors change is perfectly normal.