Text Your Way to College
nytimes.com
Text Your Way to College
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Re: Text Your Way to College
#2For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school.
Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#3For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
While it wasn't explicit in the article, it seems the focus here was much more on poor and working class communities with high performers. Students from those places able to get into top tier institutions are unlikely to be paying much if anything for their tuition.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#4For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
Elite schools aren't about the education but the network. Thats the actual value.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#5For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
I suggest reading Hillbilly Elegy (J.D. Vance) which offers a counterexample. It was cheaper for him to go to Yale law school than to Ohio State.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#6For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
No. Someone from the lower middle class would have nearly all their room, board, and tuition taken care of, with maybe 10k in low interest federal loans.
It's folks in the area around ~$100k who get hosed.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#7For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
Elite schools aren't about the education but the network. Thats the actual value.
[deleted]
Re: Text Your Way to College
#8For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
Harvard is always worth it. There are innumerable advantaged with that paticular school. Having that name on a resume keeps it near the top of most any pile. The old boys (and girls) network radiating from that school is beyond statistics. Harvard opens doors.
Re: Text Your Way to College
#9For most people, going to elite schools is a waste of money. For example, a high achieving student from a lower middle class family who goes to Harvard still pays the equivalent of full tuition and fees at an average state school, while they can often get a full ride at a state school. Obviously there are a lot of ways an elite education can help you, but most people don't want to be a lawyer or go into business.
It's implied in the article that the opposite is true.
Certain elite schools cover tuition, room and board, and occasionally supplies for low-income students through merit-based scholarships [1] even for out-of-state students, while many state schools can only afford to grant fewer full-rides, and usually only covering the in-state price -- with out-of-state being significantly more expensive.
This doesn't mean that low-income students at elite schools still won't struggle with expenses [2] or fitting in [3]. But anecdotally, when I was a top-performing high school graduate from a well-ranked high school in the mid-2000s, this information was even harder to find, so I, and many of my peers opted for state schools instead, some with scholarships.
But much of this information asymmetry still exists today. This is what this effort is trying to rectify.
[1] https://www.collegeraptor.com/blog/affordable-colleges/these... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/for-the-poor-... [3] https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/04/09/what-like-po...
Re: Text Your Way to College
#10I realise in a sense this is not a particularly nice thought, but:
> Colleges and universities need to join forces to encourage poor, high-achieving students to attend top-flight schools and nudge accepted students to enroll. Doing the right thing for students has never been so cheap.
Do they?
Competition is so high, however cheap it is, I can't see any upside for the university other than image. And that image is unlikely to do anything for their 'traditional' full-fee-paying applicant base.