[HN Gopher] Undergraduates with family income below $200k will b...
___________________________________________________________________
Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free
at MIT
Author : gnabgib
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-11-20 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Awesome. Now let's lower the bar further and do it everywhere.
| And then let's keep doing more until students can pay their
| tuition with a summer job, like they could when our elders went
| to school.
|
| I'll hold off on asking for higher education to be free, as the
| culture still pushes back on that. But a return to the former
| model would be most welcome.
| onename wrote:
| Why not be more ambitious and aim for free?
| emptiestplace wrote:
| It is difficult to enact meaningful change in a country that
| doesn't see supporting its people as an investment in itself.
| Discussing the price when it should be free is a distraction.
| rty32 wrote:
| It's never going to happen in a country where politicians try
| to convince people that college education == elitism, and a
| significant part of the population actually believes that
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Won't happen as long as the govt is giving out free loans,
| which is the driver of increasing tuition prices.
| contingencies wrote:
| Clearly nothing to do with inefficient administration, then.
| Here in Australia, where a friend's wife works as the PA for
| the Dean in one of our foremost universities, and I know
| numerous lecturers, some of whom are moving overseas for
| better opportunities (in Southeast Asia of all places!), the
| faculty-members-over-beer perspective is largely that the
| universities are head-in-sand about AI and about to become
| far less relevant. IMHO MIT OCW is great, we need more of
| that, and more mini-courses.
| stewarts wrote:
| I was going to comment that free loans and
| inefficient/outsized admin go hand-in-hand. On further
| thinking if you take away the loans, the admin has no
| choice but to shrink and achieve higher efficiencies.
| tzs wrote:
| I tried to check if that was true, but couldn't find much
| historical tuition data online. What little I did find showed
| that tuition adjusted for inflation has been increasing
| fairly steadily for over 100 years, and I didn't really see
| any change in the rates between before government loans and
| after.
|
| Maybe if I had found data for a wide range of schools instead
| of just a couple of hard to get into schools there would have
| been a more noticeable effect.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| As far as I know, and countries where tuition is free entrance
| is restricted and the students do not expect to live the United
| States university lifestyle.
|
| Free would be fine if we could expect actual return on the
| investment instead of extended high school, delaying adulthood,
| and channeling people from useful vocations within their grasp.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I'd like to see a future where a student can have free tuition
| but (with exception) is required do meaningful civic service
| work that benefits the community and country that is paying for
| tuition, ultimately graduating with zero debt if requirements
| are met.
|
| Maintaining national parks? Helping support inner city?
| Tutoring and improving public education? Imagine having the
| majority of American college students contributing to these
| worthy causes AND getting a strong education.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Doesn't the federal government already do this? Work for them
| 10 years and student debt is cancelled?
| sethammons wrote:
| I think they are suggesting that you would graduate debt
| free for having done service while getting your education
| csh0 wrote:
| This is basically the point of PSLF[0]. The cost to
| participants is not $0, but it can ultimately be very low if
| they only make income adjusted payments during their 10 years
| of service.
|
| https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-
| cancellation...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Do we also return the facilities to the state they were in
| before, particularly the residential programs? College
| enrollment percentage? What about a near universal military
| draft for men?
|
| Not that I think lowering the cost of education is a bad effort
| but appeals to some prior culture like they are apples to
| apples comparison is dishonest.
| tedunangst wrote:
| And the classrooms should be an easy stroll from the dorms,
| downhill, both ways.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Do we also return the facilities to the state they were in
| before, particularly the residential programs?
|
| Yes, please. Students learned _just fine_ without all the
| fancy facilities. Perks are great and all, but I would trade
| them for a low cost of education in a second.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| The article claims 80% of American households meet this
| threshold. I wonder what % of their incoming class (say
| restricted to Americans) meets this threshold.
| chews wrote:
| That's a great question, I'd bet it's fair to say that 80% of
| their applicants would not qualify, and yet it opens the door
| for some really deserving humans. (Not being able to afford it
| is why I didn't go to MIT, I also wasn't accepted at Cal, yet
| UCLA (and all of the UC system for that matter) was under 4,000
| a year and that's what my folks and I could afford so that's
| where I studied.)
| dleink wrote:
| Princeton has had a similar rule since 2001. Their current
| number is $100k. 25% of students pay nothing to attend. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2024/03/29/princeton-
| trustees... (go tigers)
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Approximately 60% of American households earn less than
| $100K. That's quite a difference in relative size.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| Households with earners in their 20's and early 30's don't
| tend to have a lot of children of university age. One would
| want to use the median income of households with
| university-aged children.
|
| (Median income by age rises sharply from 20->40, then
| flatlines... the median age of a mother is around 27?)
| clusterhacks wrote:
| Use College Navigator for these types of questions:
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=MIT&s=all&id=166683#...
|
| That link says 72% of incoming freshman in 2022-2023 received
| financial aid. Also has a full-time beginning net cost average
| of just under $22,000 in 2022-2023.
|
| It's not a perfect source of data, but there is enough on
| College Navigator to let you dig into it a bit and compare to
| other schools.
| brewdad wrote:
| Note that aid includes federal student loans though. They may
| have needed to come up with $22,000 out of pocket but also
| have taken on thousands more in loans that will need to be
| paid back. If they don't have the $22,000, then private
| student loans at much worse terms are likely required.
| bko wrote:
| MIT is a great financial investment. There is financing already
| available (federal and private) so presumably if someone wanted
| to go they likely could. They may leave with debt however.
|
| The median salary of an MIT graduate is 120k and the median debt
| is 12k, and less for lower income families (2023-2024):
|
| $0 - $30,000 family income: $6,866
|
| $30,001 - $75,000 family income: $9,132
|
| $75,000+ family income: $12,500
|
| Bumping this up to families making $200k seems really unnecessary
| and helps people that don't really need to help.
|
| https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| MIT is a great financial investment.
|
| How do we know that is true? Among folks whom MIT would accept,
| do we know whether those who choose to attend MIT get a greater
| return on their investment (of time and money) compared to
| those who choose to not apply or not attend?
| families making $200k seems really unnecessary and helps people
| that don't really need to help
|
| There are certainly families earning $200k who need help. $200k
| income for a family of 5 in San Francisco is different from
| $200k income for a family of 3 in rural Idaho.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| When I looked at MIT in 1990, tuition was fully covered but
| housing was BRUTAL.
|
| More than twice my parents mortgage. I'm sure it's worse, now.
| mmcwilliams wrote:
| It definitely is and is made worse by institutions like MIT
| and Harvard that don't pay their full tax burden to the city
| due to the PILOT program. They're allowed to accrue more and
| more real estate while paying a fraction of the taxes that
| other property holders would and drive prices up
| dramatically.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| From the page GP linked, the median scholarship for students
| with household income under $65k/yr also covered housing, and
| $65k-$100k covered most of the housing costs.
| robocat wrote:
| > They may leave with debt however.
|
| The linked article says not. Loans are not
| included in our financial aid offers because we believe your
| financial aid will cover your expenses. We do not expect any
| undergraduate to take out a loan. Rather than borrow, most
| students opt to work during the academic year. At MIT, this
| work often provides students not only a way to help pay for
| college but also with world-class research experience.
|
| Of course there is still the small matter of investing a few
| years of your life. The biggest regret I have with my degree
| (Canterbury) is the waste of time. I didn't learn much but the
| degree did get me a job.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Bumping this up to families making $200k seems really
| unnecessary and helps people that don't really need to help.
|
| My household income is right around $200k, and my daughter
| (still a few years from college) would definitely consider e.g.
| UC Berkeley, which (including housing) is half the cost of MIT
| for an in-state student. Free tuition would certainly make her
| look at MIT more closely, so if the goal is to draw the best
| students (and helping poor students is a side-effect), then
| it's a good idea.
|
| Also, it's headline-grabbing. There's at least one poor kid
| somewhere in the US who will read this headline and consider
| MIT, when they previously didn't (even though they probably
| already would have qualified for free, or nearly-free tuition).
| brewdad wrote:
| True. Counselors at poorer school districts frequently don't
| recognize that these "dream schools" are often more
| affordable than a state school for certain populations. The
| students certainly don't know it unless a trusted adult shows
| them and really pushes them towards pursuing it. Hopefully,
| some students out there will see this and realize that while
| MIT is crazy selective, getting in is the hardest part.
| kodt wrote:
| I feel like the number of children you have makes a big
| difference. 1 child vs 5 kids potentially with 2 in college / 3
| in private school would be vastly different financial
| situations.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Except it's a financial investment where person A(parents)
| invests, and person B(student) reaps the rewards.
| araes wrote:
| Started looking and found out there's some much worse, and far
| more obvious cases that need to implement these reforms. [1]
|
| UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment
| fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots
| with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.
|
| BTW, amazing site to be horrified by gun violence (and vaguely
| fascinated). Look upon the awfulness of Philadelphia. [2] Sitting
| in their safe little haven while East and South is wounding
| murder land with overlapping murder / wounding statistics. (12k
| from 2014-2023, 190/100000 urban) [3] Northwestern and the
| violence everywhere South in Chi-town is maybe a personal second
| choice. ($13,700,000,000, +74%, 26.9k, 280/100000 urban) [4][5]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...
|
| [2] (Guns, Philadelphia) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-
| violence-map-america-sh...
|
| [3] (Location, UPenn)
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Pennsylvania...
|
| [4] (Guns, Chicago) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-
| violence-map-america-sh...
|
| [5] (Location, Northwestern)
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northwestern+University/@4...
| nadermx wrote:
| Thetrace.org is in fact pretty sweet looking. Interesting that
| philly seems to be shot to injur and next door camden seems to
| be shoot to kill.
| njtransit wrote:
| What is the argument here, exactly?
| ciupicri wrote:
| So if a university has money, learning there should be free?
|
| If you don't have guns, you won't have gun violence, but I
| guess the second amendment won't be changed any time soon.
| tdeck wrote:
| > So if a university has money, learning there should be
| free?
|
| Not an unreasonable proposition. The purpose of the
| university is ostensibly to provide an education, not to
| continue hoarding more and more money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _purpose of the university is ostensibly to provide an
| education_
|
| One of the purposes. They're also centres for learning and
| research and repositories of knowledge.
| beeboobaa6 wrote:
| Also known as education
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Also known as education_
|
| No. There are non-teaching research universities. Many
| universities have non-teaching faculty. Learning !=
| teaching != education.
| tdeck wrote:
| If they were spending the money on those things, this
| might be an argument. But they're not spending it;
| they're hoarding it.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| $9 billion annually [1] qualifies as not spending it, I
| guess. I wish people actually checked figures before
| ranting online.
|
| 1- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizatio
| ns/231...
| jjk166 wrote:
| I don't think you understand how endowments work.
|
| It's not a pile of gold sitting in a vault on campus.
| It's an account which is productively invested and
| generating returns which are what's actually used for
| funding operations. A $20 billion endowment would be
| expected to produce about $1 billion per year, or around
| 20% of the annual operating budget. They need to bring in
| about $4 Billion more dollars per year to keep the lights
| on.
| tzs wrote:
| They _are_ spending it. On average they spend about 5% of
| it per year. In 2023 that was $975 million. It goes 53%
| to instruction, 22% to health care, 15% to student aid,
| and 10% to research, academic support, and other
| services.
|
| The point of an endowment is to provide long term support
| for whatever the purpose is of that endowment. That is
| done by investing it and using the investment earnings
| for that purpose.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I disagree. I think teaching is the sole purpose of a
| university. Research is ancillary to that, and if an
| organization only did research but didn't teach I would
| not say they get to call themselves a university any
| more.
| janalsncm wrote:
| For a private school, they can choose how to spend their
| money. Hoarding it is one option.
|
| For the federal government, they can choose how they allocate
| grants. Withholding grants from greedy schools is one option.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| You left off
|
| (Drugs) https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/mexico-
| depicts-phi...
| rs999gti wrote:
| > UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000
| endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while
| Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.
|
| Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? This is
| Philadelphia's problem, the university is just a business
| operating in the city.
| bradchris wrote:
| I think that speaks to the low bar we have come to expect
| from our endowed institutions today more than anything else.
|
| American Universities, historically, are supposed to improve
| not just their students' lives but also society as a whole,
| especially as serving as boosters for the city they're in and
| their immediate neighbors. That's why they're nonprofits.
| That's also likely their strongest lifeline to remain
| relevant in the future rather than as the hollow alumni clubs
| and gatekeepers their critics say they are, with AI/the
| internet/online schooling/topic of the day breaking down
| socioeconomic barriers to knowledge access
|
| That's why the Carnegies and Mellons built libraries,
| museums, and the very literally named Carnegie-Mellon
| university, back then. Now it seems like the first thing
| billionaires today do is isolate themselves and their wealth
| from the masses as much as possible.
| Spivak wrote:
| UPenn is a land-grant institution, they are not "just a
| business" they were given land and money specifically to
| serve the public good. They're why we have engineering
| degrees, the government specifically wanted institutions that
| taught practical marketable skills and to do research in
| those fields.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > They were given land and money specifically to serve the
| public good.
|
| Their duty is to deliver education. It's not solving
| political problems meant for elected officials (and the
| population at large).
| dleary wrote:
| If their duty is to deliver education, why are they
| sitting on a $20B hoard?
|
| Presumably they could spend a little bit of that to
| deliver some more education, couldn't they?
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| there are many, many people who are paid a lot of money
| to pretend to believe that the universities should
| actually be spending less and keeping more for their
| endowments because that strategy would enable the biggest
| impact at some indeterminate point in the future
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| They spend $9 billion annually on exactly that. This
| "hoard" can, checks notes, fund barely two years of
| operations.
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/
| 231...
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| In the short term, yes. Just like an orchard owner can
| chop down his trees and sell firewood to make a little
| more money this year.
| etempleton wrote:
| Endowments are not just slush funds that can be used at
| leadership's discretion; they are often from donated
| monies with specific stipulations set by donors on how,
| where, and what those funds can and cannot be spent on.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > UPenn is a land-grant institution
|
| It isn't.
|
| Despite the name, it's actually a private university.
|
| Penn State is Pennsylvania's land grant university.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > UPenn is a land-grant institution
|
| The University of Pennsylvania is one of the nine colonial
| colleges founded before the United States existed. It
| predates land grant institutions by over a century. I think
| you are confusing it with Pennsylvania State University,
| which _is_ a land grant institution.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Why is it UPENN 's responsibility to solve these issues?_
|
| Who's responsibility is it? Have you seen how the government
| operates? Why _wouldn 't_ UPENN want to help solve it?
| qeternity wrote:
| You're asking the wrong question: why _would_ they?
|
| How much have you contributed to Philly's woes?
|
| Probably nothing, because it doesn't benefit you.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > How much have you contributed to Philly's woes?
|
| To resolve Philly's woes?
|
| > Probably nothing, because it doesn't benefit you.
|
| If they pay taxes...
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| OK, but they do exist to educate people, and have a
| comically large endowment to do it with that only keeps
| growing. I guess their plan is to grow the endowment until
| all human beings everywhere can get full ride UPenn
| scholarships?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Going up is what an endowment is supposed to do; you
| spend some part of the return on operational needs, while
| also growing the base so you have greater (nominal, and
| hopefully also real) capacity for that downstream.
|
| If, over the long term, an endowment _isn't_ growing,
| it's being mismanaged.
| myworkinisgood wrote:
| It is the government's responsibility. Change your
| government with votes.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Is there a coherent argument tying A to B here? Schools have
| large endowments and are also sometimes located in violent
| cities. Is it your contention that one causes the other, or
| even could in theory affect the other? Otherwise I don't see
| the point, you might as well bring up the number of potholes in
| Philadelphia too.
|
| Also Northwestern is in Evanston, not Chicago. Two different
| cities.
| tzs wrote:
| They are not sitting on it. They spend about 5% of it annually.
| knowitnone wrote:
| Yeah, education should be free. Record all lectures and put them
| out there. Charge a small fee to view them if you must but
| lecturers repeating themselves is not my idea of a great use of
| their time. Yes, I know lots of lectures are already published.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Watching non-interactive lectures is a small part of the
| overall experience. I'm not commenting on whether the
| experience is 'worth it', but assuming the only thing people
| get is the ability to watch lectures doesn't make the point.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| On the other hand, many people act like "talking to
| professors over beer" (or to your classmates, for that
| matter) is supposed to add "value" to the college experience,
| when it's perfectly possible to get at least a bachelor's and
| a master's without ever doing that (source: I did).
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Two people with the same GPA and same piece of paper from
| the same college, may have gotten different amounts of
| lasting value from their college experience.
| mullingitover wrote:
| A big part of it is having a long-term peer group of people
| who were disciplined and motivated enough to get into MIT and
| succeed there. Arguably true for any university. We're
| products of our environments, and if you surround yourselves
| with hardworking people it rubs off on you.
| p-a_58213 wrote:
| It really depends on the subject matter and the institution's
| focus (and tier). For disciplines where foundational knowledge
| remains relatively unchanged (say, Latin) recorded lectures
| could be an efficient way to disseminate information without
| requiring professors to repeat the same material. A "flipped
| classroom" would offer opportunities for more dynamic
| interaction and deeper understanding, and of course this would
| cost money.
|
| However, as a professor myself in a rapidly evolving STEM field
| adjacent to AI, I update at least 20% of my course materials
| each year to keep pace with new developments. As it happens,
| about a third of the new content is derived from my research
| group's latest work. Recording lectures isn't a one-time
| effort; it would require constant updates to remain relevant
| (and let me tell you, if you want to get the voice-over right,
| it is a lot more time-consuming and soul-crushing than simply
| turning up in class and giving a live lecture).
|
| The value of live lectures goes beyond just "transmitting"
| content. They offer real-time interaction, immediate feedback,
| and dynamic discussions that adapt to the students'
| understanding. This level of interaction devilishly difficult
| to replicate in recorded formats.
|
| I would ramble on more, but I need to return to the lecture
| materials I am developing for this Friday on Vision-Language
| Models :P
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak
| directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs
| don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents
| had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of
| $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine
| the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the
| salary. Essentially saying to sell off the family business for
| the college fund, which was a non-starter.
|
| Small businesses are allegedly the backbone of America, and I
| feel these tuition support programs overlook this segment of the
| middle-class.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's _incredibly_ difficult to structure these rules in a way
| that doesn't discriminate against small businesses while not
| opening a giant loophole for the rich.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Why is the price you have to pay for something dependent on
| how much money your parents make? Feels so unfair
| mh- wrote:
| In my opinion, you're reasoning about it incorrectly.
|
| What if I said: the price is the same for everyone, but
| people with less access to money get proportionally more
| assistance paying that price?
| changoplatanero wrote:
| still seems weird to me. is there any other product for
| 18-22 year olds where the price changes depending on
| their parents wealth?
| mh- wrote:
| Interesting question. I can't think of anything outside
| of the education sphere, no. Maybe someone else will
| chime in with an example.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I would argue that financing a purchase (say, a house or
| car) falls into this category. The object itself does not
| change price, but the financing will change price wildly
| depending on whether the parents have good credit and can
| cosign the loan.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| This one makes sense to me cause the price (interest) is
| related to the risk or repayment. The way the
| universities do it is they want to find out how much
| money is in your parents bank account and then take as
| much of it as possible.
| feanaro wrote:
| So there _is_ an upper limit, which is the real price?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Because it is really a discount to the parents, not the
| student. It is understood that few 17 year olds have saved
| enough money to pay MIT's tuition of $85k/year for 4 years
| and parents are usually footing the bill.
|
| Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not to
| spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty strong
| case that it is their parents screwing them over, not the
| school. The school doesn't owe a discount to prospective
| students.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not
| to spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty
| strong case that it is their parents screwing them over,
| not the school.
|
| No you can't. The school is the one choosing to set their
| prices based on the parents, who might or might not have
| anything to do with the student's school budget. That is
| the school's faulty assumption, and they, not the
| parents, are the ones screwing over those students.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The reason is because small business owners are often, by any
| measure that doesn't explicitly discount ownership of the
| business, actually rich.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There really aren't that many rich people, relatively
| speaking, so who cares? That's throwing the baby out with the
| bathwater.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Heh, for my jurisdiction, to get gov financial aid for a 2nd
| degree, they expected me to withdraw from retirement savings to
| fund it, but no similar expectation if you had a locked-in
| defined contribution pension plan (lol I wish).
|
| Nor would they expect you to take a line of credit against the
| equity in property if you owned any, but stocks are always a
| rich person luxury that you can sell!
|
| Kinda cemented that we're rewarding a failure to save and
| rewarding a failure to save in something liquid.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Why are such things in the US so complicated? Where I live,
| studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for
| everyone!
|
| That's the only fair way. Also, a set of well educated people
| pays itself back later in the form of mostly income and added
| value taxes, which provides money to keep studying for cheap
| for the next generation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Because education is largely an afterthought, and
| universities primarily compete on entertainment and prestige.
|
| High cost and exclusivity is the entire point.
|
| A university open to all with a fraction of the price would
| be a poorly ranked one in every competitive measure.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > universities primarily compete on entertainment and
| prestige.
|
| I like to call this "resort-style education".
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Still, I do not get it. Why would this competition /
| exclusivity rule be so much less prevalent in large parts
| of Europe?
|
| I don't want to say Europe is without problems, but I think
| this kind of legislation, together with social security in
| general, is a clear example of how it can be handled more
| efficient and fair for most people.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Good question. I wonder if labor competition in Europe is
| less reliant on University names and reputation? IT could
| also have to do with cultural difference is what students
| look for in a university.
|
| My understanding is that most universities in Europe look
| more like US bare bones commuter schools, opposed to an
| all inclusive recreational experience.
|
| The top ranked university in Europe is Oxford, which
| educates more than twice as many students as MIT with
| half the budget. I doubt this is because Oxford is
| cutting corners on educational curriculum.
| currymj wrote:
| actually ETHZ and EPFL are very good and highly ranked, and
| have cheap tuition and open enrollment. i don't know how
| they do it. I guess things just work better in Switzerland.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most
| professions,for everyone!_
|
| I'll go out on a limb and bet people in your country earn
| much less than the average American, too. Why? Why don't
| companies just pay these people more? IT all comes back in
| income and value added taxes.
| shafyy wrote:
| I don't know where the OP lives. But in Switzerland, where
| world-class univeristies like the ETH cost something like $
| 1.5k a year in tuition, I'm pretty certain that people earn
| more on average than in the USA.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I live in Belgium, we earn quite a lot less on average
| indeed. However why would we need so much money? We can
| go to hospital, or even 20 times visit a dentist for that
| matter, without expensive insurance and without the fear
| of bankruptcy. We can have kids without fear of not being
| able to pay kintergarten.
| ummonk wrote:
| Americans earn more than Swiss people after taxes
| according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_hou
| sehold_and_per_c...
| LtWorf wrote:
| And after paying insurance?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Yeah indeed a giant part (75 percent or so) of what the
| companies pay, does not directly go to the workers bank
| account.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Because America is a place where people have been
| indoctrinated to believe that misery is the cost of freedom.
| It's a place where half the population would rather read your
| obituary or donate to your fundraiser than simply have a
| healthcare system that people can use in a timely manner
| without worrying about cost.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I really think Freedom, the American way, is super
| overrated. If the cost is misery, fear of loss of health or
| job, what's left of Its benefits? "I'm the chosen one
| protected by God"? Or does social security still have this
| huge connotation with communism?
|
| Sorry for my ranting, I just cannot believe what is still
| happening.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| American universities sell their students a lot of amenities
| that aren't really necessary for study. Not to mention the
| bloated admin class. You want to feel "in" when it comes to
| social justice? Here are your administrators that do the
| rituals of social justice as a full-time job, but they demand
| salaries.
|
| As for amenities, back in Europe, many universities don't
| even have a campus, just a scattering of buildings all around
| the city, acquired randomly as the school grew (that includes
| dorm buildings, often quite far from one another). You will
| spend some extra time commuting among them, but the
| university saves money - and, indirectly, you too.
|
| Getting from dorm to lectures usually took me about 30
| minutes each way - on foot, then subway, then on foot again.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| 30 minutes does not seem too bad. Unless you paid a lot for
| the dorm.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Roger Freeman, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan's education
| advisor, was afraid that educated voters would turn the
| United States towards communism.
|
| One of Ronald Reagan's campaign promises was dismantling or
| breaking the department of education, similar to what he had
| done to California's state universities by limiting their
| budgets and moving the burden of tuition to students.
|
| At the time this was quite popular as it lowered taxes.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| A few weeks ago apparently, the 'promise less
| taxes->everybody happy' magic spell has once again worked.
| currymj wrote:
| the ideal is that college should be very expensive for rich
| people and cheap, free, or at least more affordable, for less
| wealthy people.
|
| american universities get closer to this ideal than you might
| expect. the days of outrageous student debt are thankfully
| fading away, at least for undergraduate degrees.
|
| it would make more sense to do this redistribution through
| taxes if possible, but many US institutions are private so
| that doesn't really work. so the colleges basically have
| their own privately-run means testing programs, and like all
| such programs there are flaws and loopholes.
| hooo wrote:
| Why should college be very expensive for rich people?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| We have plenty of cheaper schools too, and they're fine. The
| expensive schools are for the richest people to say they went
| to school next to the best students who get in free.
|
| And for the best students to meet rich people.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I can understand why they might do this. Many people who own a
| small business underpay themselves significantly and use the
| extra funds on the business to build up assets. This defers
| taxes and allows the funds to be reinvested without tax. They
| might even take out loans on those business assets. The same
| way the wealthy will pay themselves a tiny salary and just live
| off the asset value of their stock. Someone who owns their own
| business could also easily drop their salary significantly for
| the year prior to applying to college.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Isn't the entire point of these assessments to look at total
| assets, and not just annual income?
|
| I dont think this was an oversight or mistake. I think the
| expectation was that yes, people should sell assets if they
| have them .
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The "mistake" is that the assets themselves are the source of
| income. Sell them off, and the income goes away too. It's the
| equivalent of expecting the parents to use 100% of their
| income to put their kids into college, which is impossible.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| A bunch of stock is a source of income too, but it wouldn't
| be wrong to use some of it.
|
| If the business is worth enough then selling it can replace
| all the income you would have ever gotten from it. It's not
| as simple as "income goes away". The specific numbers make
| all the difference.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well, how big were the business assets?
|
| Specifically, what percent of the business would have to be
| sold off? My reaction is very different for 5% versus 50%.
| d2049 wrote:
| When I was touring colleges as a high school senior I met someone
| who had gotten into MIT but whose family could only afford to
| send one kid to an elite college, him or his sister. He decided
| to go to a state school which was a lot less expensive but whose
| academics weren't close to the same level. This stuff matters to
| people.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Most students go into debt to attend college. I fell into a
| bracket where I didn't get any financial assistance but my
| parents didn't want to/couldn't pay for tuition. I got personal
| loans for everything. I think this is a common scenario.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Yes but the algorithm also is that they take 5% of your assets
| each year. So if you've saved $1M (not much for a $200K a year
| couple in their 50s), that's $50K a year out the door.
| daveed wrote:
| Where are you seeing this?
| brewdad wrote:
| FAFSA. That's one of the calculations that goes into Expected
| Family Contribution. There is an expectation that parent's
| contribute some % of income (20%?), 5% of assets, and that
| the student basically contributes 90% of any income or assets
| to their name before a single dollar of aid, usually federal
| loans, will be offered.
|
| For all of you younger folks just starting your families,
| expect to pay full price for college if you are anywhere near
| the top 25% of earners (most of this site presumably). Any
| scholarship money is a bonus but aid probably isn't going to
| be forthcoming.
|
| The subtext of this MIT announcement is that any family
| making more than $200,000 will be paying full price to
| subsidize the poorer students.
| robnado wrote:
| Honestly, that wouldn't be a bad way to fund education:
| education is free, but the university gets taxation power over
| you so they can tax you at x% of your income. It aligns
| incentives better than the current system.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| In which case you may like how it's done in the UK. it's
| technically debt but in essence works as a graduate tax. The
| government pays for your education with a loan. You then only
| pay back 9% of your income over a certain income threshold.
| You do this until you pay back the loan or 30-40 years have
| passed. So in practice this is a graduate tax.
| __d wrote:
| Australia does something similar (it's called HECS if you
| want to search for details).
| bell-cot wrote:
| This part seems to be getting overlooked -
|
| > And for the 50 percent of American families with income below
| $100,000, parents can expect to pay nothing at all toward the
| full cost of their students' MIT education, which includes
| tuition as well as housing, dining, fees, and an allowance for
| books and personal expenses.
|
| > This $100,000 threshold is up from $75,000 this year, while
| next year's $200,000 threshold for tuition-free attendance will
| increase from its current level of $140,000.
|
| - even though that's the article's 2nd and 3rd paragraph.
| pledess wrote:
| This may have unintended consequences on chances of a successful
| application. Now, as a high school senior, you have to compete
| against an additional pool of strong students who aren't
| especially interested in MIT's offerings, but have parents
| pushing them toward the least expensive of all top universities.
| janalsncm wrote:
| It's not an unintended consequence. Another way of phrasing
| your concern is "MIT will have an especially strong applicant
| pool" which is a desirable outcome.
| crowcroft wrote:
| 100% agree, isn't this the meritocracy we want?
|
| The other side of this is saying the status quo is; as a high
| school senior with wealthy parents, you don't have to compete
| against as many strong students if you apply for MIT because
| it has high barriers to entry (that aren't based on merit),
| and so you should apply even if you aren't particularly
| interested in their offering.
|
| Also, the reality is most kids will be applying for all of
| the schools. MIT might want to improve their yield rate.
| Yabood wrote:
| UVA does this for households that make less $100K. Hopefully,
| they'll follow suit and bump it to $200K as well.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >Newly expanded financial aid will cover tuition costs for
| admitted students from 80 percent of U.S. families.
|
| What percentage of MIT students...
|
| Two teachers in a HCOL city are going to be above 200k.
| petesergeant wrote:
| https://sfs.mit.edu/undergraduate-students/the-cost-of-atten...
|
| > 58% of full-time undergraduates received [some form of] MIT
| Scholarship [but not necessarily a full one] during the
| 2023-2024 academic year.
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