shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 29, 2012 10:06:13 GMT -5
usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/28/13532858-student-subsidies-of-classmates-tuition-add-to-anger-over-rising-college-costs?liteHere's my summary- -It's unfair that international and out-of-state students pay over 2x more than in state students, and that some of the money from their tuition goes into university financial aid programs -It's unfair the freshman and sophmores pay the same tuition as juniors and seniors (because they are in the large survey courses that are likely taught be graduate students instead of professors, compared to the smaller classes attended by upper classmen) -It's unfair that people getting BAs pay the same tuition as those getting BSs, because it costs more to teach STEM courses The problem is NONE of this is new. And I just don't get the outrage. Tuition costs (at state schools) are not going up because the universities are greedy but because the state legislatures are cutting their budgets drastically. Now, there are some things in the article, which, if true, I do find annoying- such as Cal State saying they won't take "in state" graduate students because out of state graduate students pay more. The reason I say "if true" is that at all the schools I attended, and all the ones I looked at graduate programs for, all graduate students paid the same tuition. There was no in-state vs out-of-state tuition for graduate level courses. And considering the article claims that a PhD student pays the same tuition as a freshman (I've never seen a school where graduate tuition wasn't drastically higher than undergrad), I just don't know that I can trust that them that the Cal graduate program has different rates. The sad part is, they lost me with their first "sob" story- an out-of-state undergrad at UC Berkeley, who claims that her family isn't any better off financially than the students who her tuition helps subsidize. If that's the case, WTH did she choose to go to a UC school as an out of state student? She knew what she was going to be paying when she applied. They post that kind of crap. If her family is struggling, why didn't she go to her instate school (University of Washington or Washington State)? If she can get into Berkeley- she could have gotten into one of those schools- possibly with financial aid. I mean, the UC system overall, but Berkeley especially, is famous for only taking enough underclassmen to keep their 4 year accredidation status. They don't want to teach the survey courses. If they could get away with it, they would only accept juniors and seniors. This is why CA has such a robust community college system, and a lot of the UC school guarantee admission to any CC graduate with a certain GPA or higher. Anyway, did anyone else find this article as annoying as I did?
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Loopdilou
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Post by Loopdilou on Aug 29, 2012 10:14:14 GMT -5
I'm not even going to bother reading it, it already annoys me. Out of state students can kiss my high tax paying ass
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 29, 2012 10:20:20 GMT -5
Loop: To make it annoy you even more, there was one throw away line about how some people were also mad that taxpayers subsidize the tuition of faculty's children (they often don't pay anything, or pay a very reduced fee- it's one of the benefits that comes with being a professor). But the article mentions that once and never goes back to the idea. Having worked at a university, I find that somewhat amusing because I knew a number of people who worked for the lower than they could get elsewhere pay specifically for the tuition benefit it would get their kids.
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Bluerobin
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Post by Bluerobin on Aug 29, 2012 10:25:02 GMT -5
Out of state students should pay triple!
Who cares about fair? By the time you reach college, you should have realized that life is not fair.
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Loopdilou
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Post by Loopdilou on Aug 29, 2012 10:28:56 GMT -5
Loop: To make it annoy you even more, there was one throw away line about how some people were also mad that taxpayers subsidize the tuition of faculty's children (they often don't pay anything, or pay a very reduced fee- it's one of the benefits that comes with being a professor). But the article mentions that once and never goes back to the idea. Having worked at a university, I find that somewhat amusing because I knew a number of people who worked for the lower than they could get elsewhere pay specifically for the tuition benefit it would get their kids.
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alabamagal
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Post by alabamagal on Aug 29, 2012 10:31:20 GMT -5
It is pretty annoying! Tuition costs are spelled out up front. Choose your college based on tuition, if you want.
Both of my boys college tuition is being subsidized (90%) by the people buying lottery tickets in GA. They have to keep good grades. My daughters tuition was paid for by the tax payers of a neighboring state based on her high school grades/SAT and keeping good grades in school. Is this fair? (maybe not, but I sure appreciate it)
Is it fair that the 300 lb lineman is getting his tuition, room and board paid for? Is this fair? (Probably not, but the guy is bringing in money for his school)
If the girl in the article didn't want to pay out of state tuition, she should have stayed in Washington State.
Life is not fair, get over it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 10:38:22 GMT -5
Tuition costs (at state schools) are not going up because the universities are greedy but because the state legislatures are cutting their budgets drastically. I'd really like to see the breakdown of factors affecting college costs over the last 20-30 years. Private college costs have also skyrocketed well above general inflation rates and they never got state aid in the first place. What about the athletic department budgets for football and basketball? They always claim that it's a profit center because of increased alumni giving but that's a really mushy number because alumni giving is affected by so many other things. Finally, does the article mention the subsidy of scholarship students by parents who pay the sticker prices? My savings and income meant DS qualified for nothing that was needs-based. I wonder how much of the tuition an fees I paid went to educate someone else's kid.
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bean29
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Post by bean29 on Aug 29, 2012 10:42:30 GMT -5
I thought the point of the article was that college students who are paying their own tuition are paying about 25% more than they would pay if they were not subsidizing other students. It then also got into the other stuff that undergraduate students subsidize graduate students, doctoral students etc.
Taxpayers do not subsidize 50% of tuition in most states so does in make sense that out of state students pay 2-2.5x more? I agree that that is a choice you make, so I am not going to waste my time thinking about it, but I am all for not subsidizing other students when I pay tuition.
We are paying about $9,000 a semester for tuition, room, board and a meal plan - 25% of that would save us around $2,000 I would be happy to save even $1,000.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 10:48:19 GMT -5
I think there is some push back because a lot of public colleges/universities have increased the number of out of state students to raise funds. What was frustrating for me, personally, was DH being charged out of state tuition because he started school within nine months of moving to Oregon. While I get the reasoning behind it because every student would be in state after one year, I was pissed when they turned down our appeal, which included the fact that we were paying income taxes in OR and had purchased a home. I was further pissed off when I learned that it would have been cheaper for DH to start at the state university, rather than the CC, because of the Western Undergraduate Exchange (limits out of state tuition to 150%). I mean, the UC system overall, but Berkeley especially, is famous for only taking enough underclassmen to keep their 4 year accredidation status. They don't want to teach the survey courses. If they could get away with it, they would only accept juniors and seniors. Inneresting. I thought colleges loved survey courses because they are cheap to teach - generally you can get a graduate student to do most of the heavy lifting and get hundreds of kids in one class instead of the more intensive upper division courses which have a much smaller student/teacher ratio.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 10:49:17 GMT -5
Taxpayers do not subsidize 50% of tuition in most states so does in make sense that out of state students pay 2-2.5x more? One of the UC business schools gets only 6% from the state. They are trying to go private.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 29, 2012 10:56:33 GMT -5
University of Michigan caught a lot of shit about doing just that years ago. They had to conform and add more in state students. Frankly, college went up because of the ease of school loans and parents wanting their darlings to live four more years on the bank of mom and dad with a nonsense degree. Gone are the days of smart kids going to college, now everybody goes regardless of brains or inclination.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 29, 2012 10:57:15 GMT -5
But I'm grateful to Bright Futures because that's how my kids for thru college with no loans. But they qualified because of brains.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 29, 2012 10:59:26 GMT -5
If they were morons who wanted to just cruise through more years on my nickel with no life plan, they'd be on their own.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 29, 2012 11:15:40 GMT -5
Yes, the article mentions scholarships. They assume that mostly affluent kids get those (because only rich kids have the time to be smart) so they say that rich, dumb kids are subsidizing rich smart kids.
cocoabean: Except that universities have ALWAYS worked this way. This is NOT new. Out of state and international students pay more for tuition. I don't think in state students would see much a of tuition break at all, but even so, the university gets to choose how to spend tuition money. They spend some of it providing financial aid to students who cannot afford to attend college without help. I am personally for this. I think everyone who can hack it should get the chance for a higher education, not just those who can afford it (especially since some of them can't hack it).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 11:39:41 GMT -5
I never used the gym or raquetball courts when i was on campus... I think its crazy that my tuition went to subsidize someone else's fun time
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justme
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Post by justme on Aug 29, 2012 12:11:59 GMT -5
I don't think the writer/whoever thought through what lowering the cost for some degrees would do. I know at my college the arts program was in an uproar because their budget was cut. The business school was bring in more money because they had way more students and needed more money for more classes. Cutting the arts college budget meant they had to cut classes. If you charged art students even less, then wouldn't their budget go down even more?
Not to mention how it would cause an even bigger glut of fluff degrees because people would look at a STEM degree and realize they'd have to take out more loans to get that degree. Hmmm...though maybe that would decrease competition for STEM jobs, and benefit me.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 29, 2012 12:36:33 GMT -5
Isn't the whole mission of a STATE school to educate the residents of the STATE?
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 29, 2012 12:40:01 GMT -5
Yea, I agree that most of the article is BS. However I have to admit I do resent the fact that taxpayers will pay for all, or heavily subsidize, students from poor families. I think everyone should have to take a loan to have some skin in the game. This is especially true when you consider the statistics show that low income students are significantly more likely not to finish their degree than students from higher income families. If you don't have any skin in the game it is way too easy to give up and drop out. The stats for the 4 year institution by family income level are especially telling. nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_347.asp
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 29, 2012 12:45:20 GMT -5
But is that really due to the fact that they didn't pay for it. Or is it due to lack of prepardness for the education process? Or is it just a cultural thing? When I met my husband he had dropped out of school. He just didn't really "get it" and he had no one to talk to. He had paid plenty into the system, and now he was staring at debt and had no definitive path, and no one in his family had been through it, so he had nowhere to turn. So, he just dropped out and kept working - his parents, his brothers and his friends all thought it was great. He had a good paying job and was a hard working guy. That was respectable. That was what you were suppose to do. I shared my slightly different take on the world, and mentored him through. I don't think his experience was an unusual one.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 29, 2012 12:47:17 GMT -5
That reminds me of my girlfriend who made her kids get student loans and then paid them off for graduation present. If they fooled around, it'd have stayed their dime! When they had skin in the game, they majored in things that would make them employable as opposed to easy majors.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 29, 2012 12:47:32 GMT -5
I don't think low income kids would be less likely to drop out if they had to pay some money. I do think they would be less likely to start at all, and some college is definitely better than no college. Poor kids don't drop out to go party or because they are bored. They drop out because someone has to support their family, or because there is no money from their family to support themselves. When I was in school (and granted, undergrad was almost 20 years ago) scholarships and grants didn't cover dorms or apartments or food. And if the kid doesn't have a full ride, but has to be full time to get the money, then they need to figure out a way to pay tuition, too.
Skin in the game can make a difference, but it's not guaranteed to. (Said as someone who had skin in the game, but it didn't stop me from losing my full ride and taking 6 years to graduate- with a 2.83GPA when I'd had a 3.97 in highschool.)
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 29, 2012 12:58:59 GMT -5
But is that really due to the fact that they didn't pay for it. Or is it due to lack of prepardness for the education process? Or is it just a cultural thing? When I met my husband he had dropped out of school. He just didn't really "get it" and he had no one to talk to. He had paid plenty into the system, and now he was staring at debt and had no definitive path, and no one in his family had been through it, so he had nowhere to turn. So, he just dropped out and kept working - his parents, his brothers and his friends all thought it was great. He had a good paying job and was a hard working guy. That was respectable. That was what you were suppose to do. I shared my slightly different take on the world, and mentored him through. I don't think his experience was an unusual one. Thyme - what do you mean by a cultural thing?
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 29, 2012 13:03:56 GMT -5
Well - I thought my story about my husband kind of spelled it out. His family doesn't really value a college degree. They value jobs and hard work. So, my husband dropping out of school wasn't a tragedy. None of his friends had degrees - and many of them thought he was being a little snobbish by going to get one. I'm sure there are plenty of families that want their kids to go to college - but even if they want that, maybe they don't really know how to emotionally support a kid through that. There are a lot of hoops and twists to getting a degree. It can be confusing, and difficult. Even if someone is really wanting their kid to graduate, they might not see how that will happen because that kid needs to work to pay for living expenses, or whatever.
I came from a family that believes very, very strongly in college educations. I can see how their values and their support pushed me through the education process. I knew people that didn't have that support and they had some hiccups along the way. Sometimes it derailed them completely.
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 29, 2012 13:15:02 GMT -5
Ahh, thanks got it. It's interesting though. My background is completely blue collar and I was the first to go to college. My friends and family thought college was the way to ensure you didn't have to work as hard for a living and was therefore a good thing. Not sure that worked out, though
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Aug 29, 2012 13:21:57 GMT -5
It depends on the family. My very blue collar family made sure all of us went to college, my generation of cousins and myself. Two of my aunts went years later. Then their husbands went.
Cultural can mean a lot of things. Some cultures push their children to stay down and be like them. Some want more for their children.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Aug 29, 2012 13:25:07 GMT -5
I know that the university where I am employed has a certain percentage of the class that they have to accept as resident students.
The biggest problem that they are running into is that they are having a hard time getting qualified students. Because of this, many times the requirements for a non-resident are higher than for a resident in getting admitted.
About the rest of the article, my undergrad classes were large as a freshman and sophomore. By the time I got into my last 2 years of college (in a STEM curriculum), I was in the same sort of smaller classes that are common in graduate education - where a class of 20 would be considered large. Ultimately, it'll even out in the end IMO.
The article would have been more interesting if it had addressed the unpreparedness of out of country students who pay gobs of $$ to get educated in the US. I had to deal with this situation last summer, where I had a student from Saudi who was horribly unprepared for the work she had to do. I know that the university kept her around because she was paying a buttload of tuition to the college. Unfortunately, many times when they are so unprepared, they are likely to cheat so I had to be on the lookout for plagerism as well. That single graduate student took up far more of my time than 3 undergrad students.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 29, 2012 13:26:26 GMT -5
Absolutely - and I'm not saying that every person from every family that has less money will have a family that tries to prevent their success. Or that every person from every family that has had financial success will fly through college without a scratch. It is just that college is hard. And so many things can go wrong. As I said - even a family who wants that for their children might not really have the resources or the understanding to make it happen.
But alas, not only did my husband get his bachelors, and go on to get his law degree - his brother later returned to school and got a bachelors degree, too.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 13:36:33 GMT -5
It is just that college is hard. And so many things can go wrong. As I said - even a family who wants that for their children might not really have the resources or the understanding to make it happen. My Dad was the first in his family to go to college and there were a lot of cultural barriers he had to overcome. His father just didn't understand why Dad didn't want a good factory job like he'd always held, although his mother took a job in a bar to help with college costs. Dad also told me later that he'd never spent a night anywhere but his own bed- parents just liked their little town and saw no reason to venture out. Suddenly Dad was hitchhiking from northern Ohio to Cincinnati. Whatever problems he had with professors, homesickness, getting acclimated to studying engineering- they had no experience to help him. I agree that even when your family realizes college is a good idea, they may be unequipped to help because they have no experience and they can't give you advice.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 15:15:22 GMT -5
What poor kid is going to college completely on the dole? Grants are a pittance... They all get loans.,.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Aug 29, 2012 15:28:40 GMT -5
Oped: I think the argument of the article is that if we made the poor kids take it all out in loans (instead of giving them some grants) then the middle class kids would have to take out less money in loans, and that would be better. Because we need to find a way to give a leg up to the kids who already started with a leg up and hold the ones at the bottom down. Again, the article also claimes that the only people who get academic scholarships are already rich, so the poor kids don't really have a shot at those, either.
I really have very little sympathy for students who choose out of state state schools and then complain about their higher tuition. They knew what the tuition would be when they applied. Their families haven't been paying taxes to support that state school. They could have gone to their in state school and payed less.
And to be honest, I also don't have much sympathy for people who move to a new area intending to go to school without double checking the in state/out of state requirements. When we moved to WA, I knew I intended to go back to school, so I did all the residency things right away- switched banks (not a requirement anymore), got a new driver's license, etc. And I also knew that I had to be a resident of the state (which the banking/license thing proved) at least one year before I'd be considered a resident. I knew this, because just like tuition rates, this is all publically available information, usually right on the school's website.
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