Presumably, the willingness of the family to make sacrifices for their child is a positive indicator for how driven the child will be.
They use weasel words
"Dartmouth is now removing the loan requirement for undergraduates from families with annual income of more than $125,000 who receive need-based financial aid."
Most students coming from families earning 125k+ won't actually qualify for any aid.
The entire financial aid system is broken. Have a domestic violence situation at home, so your parents don't want to fill your FASA out, no aid for you !
Still live with your supportive parents at 24, you automatically get the max amount.
If I ran the world, I would give everyone aid for up to 6 years, and get rid of affirmative action completely.
I'd argue the vast vast majority of students are better served going to a community college first. Figure out if college is even something you want to do , and if it is, get yourself a part-time job or better yet a full-time one so you understand how to manage money.
If you read around, there is an epidemic of college freshman whose parents have the ambition, and will do whatever to force their kid into the college and even the major they choose…(sample: https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Adult-Overparenting-Prepare..., these are students entering Stanford whose can’t make their own decisions).
Who ended up stuck with the loans for these degrees that the kids may not want or have the independence to take advantage of? Not the parents… the students are the ones suffering for their parents’ ambition.
Obviously not the whole picture, and maybe it’s not completely right yet, but I think this particular direction will help some of those students.
Good?
Great way to make sure that the children of the professional class of people who make that sort of money (lawyers, engineers, nurses) not work as hard as possible and use their upbringing to contribute to the future of the country. Putrid take.
Giving poor kids a leg up over upper middle class kids is a win regardless of what you do with rich kids. That’s a separate issue.
> Great way to make sure that the children of the professional class of people who make that sort of money (lawyers, engineers, nurses) not work as hard as possible and use their upbringing to contribute to the future of the country.
The upper middle class has been instrumental in the last few decades in driving inequality. Behind every factory that’s shut down in Milwaukee and outsourced to China there’s lawyers and consultants and even logistical engineers making that happen. See: https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jul/15/how-us-mi...
Your second point doesn't make any sense - we should be punishing children because of the amorphous negative externalities of every professional in the United States economy? They're to blame as opposed to the leadership of modern corporations that vote themselves multi million dollar bonuses each year while offshoring business and keeping worker pay down?
Hopefully, American making $150k/year heard about savings, and can also predict the expense of college, and can plan for it in advance.
First, the $150k is at the time of child’s application, not over their entire life.
Second, college tuition has been increasing at highly variable rates so I doubt anyone would have guessed that tuition would increase 8%/year for 18 years.
Third, four years of Dartmouth tuition is $300k. Let’s graciously say the average income over the kid’s 18 years is $100k. That means that that parents would need to save $16k/year or 16%. There’s no tax deferred program that allows $16k/year so factor in tax dollars.
Fourth, families frequently have multiple children. So if they have two, you think parents should save 30% of their income for college? Or if 3, 45%?
It’s funny how people imagine $150k is some massive amount of money. And it’s a decent living, but it’s not something that paying an extra $6k per month is possible.
And many more.
Although I don’t know a fix because if you had special situations for people like me, people would abuse it. I had a friend with divorced parents. The dad was pretty wealthy making like $500/year and paying the mom $100k/year in child support so the mom didn’t work and had like $3k tax returns from some part time job. She swore an affidavit that she received zero income from the dad and that the son was estranged from the dad. So the friend got a 100% needs based scholarship. It’s not like schools have an investigative arm to test claims.
I make a good amount too, and I don't have a spare 3k per month.
Let's just say you have a rough time after 2 years.
At community college , you're out maybe 2 or 3k total. Using your own numbers, that would be 70k spent without a degree.
A friend of mine wanted to go to school after working for over a decade. She went to the University of Miami, got to the Continuing Education department and noticed not a single person on duty but a taped piece of paper saying everyone was working remotely due to CoVid. In 2022! Headed on to the location for Undergrad Admissions and was given a website where she could get more info. For a school that charges $65K+ a year.
It happened again at a college in DC where all that she could get was a website versus speaking to an admissions counselor, getting a group tour on some particular date, etc.
Even though about half of the university employees encountered were college students, their attitude of just cashing a paycheck and keeping the seats warm is both a cost and a reflection of the quality of administration.
So much of University tuition now seems to be going to maintain salaries and perks for layers upon layers of employees and administrators versus student benefits.
That's the point.
This is a non-change. They've always accepted a few poor people and dolled out scholarships under the unspoken guise of "economic diversity". If you don't fall into that category you either need to be rich or exceed the typical admissions requirements by enough to warrant an exception. The university is just patting itself on the back for something it's always been doing.
IMHO, income from college endowments that are larger than one billion dollars should be taxed at 110%.
My child applied to a school that had a similar policy that students would only graduate with $15k in student loans.
Tuition was $40k back when kid applied. We filled out financial aid package with my income of like $150k and no assets outside of retirement savings.
We got a letter with “congrats total amount each year is $47k including room and board, work study is $1500, grant is $1500, expected parental contribution is $44k/year. You don’t need student loans.”
It was really frustrating. So the wording on what financial contributions should be, like in this article, has lots of wiggle room. It seems Dartmouth is covering tuition for families making $65k or less. But a single year’s tuition is $60k, so good luck to families making $70k.
I think these legacy universities don’t want to lower tuition because they still admit lots of rich people who just pay. But the middle class is really squeezed out. Of course the lower class is squeezed as well since it’s hard to get accepted if parents can’t afford tutors, coaches, etc.