Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans • Hacker News Board

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#41

Post by ben_jones » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

onwardly wrote: post #24

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

Because they still want people that can afford to pay $50k/year to pay it. Lowering tuition lowers it for everyone. If your parents make $300k+/year, then you'll still be paying full tuition. But as their income is lower, currently you'll get some need-based financial aid. The problem is that this aid is a combination of "scholarship" and "loans". The goal here is to remove the loan component. The problem still is th…

While the process sounds good in theory there is an ever increasing gap that people fall into between parents making too much money and parents not making enough. I'm bias because I fell right into the middle of the gap - my parents inherited an illiquid share of real estate that on paper is worth about a million dollars, in reality after taxes it yields maybe 40k/yr that my parents live off of (60+, no college). Because of this I was denied any form of financial aid and had to fend for myself.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#42

Post by horsecaptin » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:12 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #32

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

> Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? Because the Third Associate Dean of Humanities can't fund their $600k salary with the goodwill from a more reasonable tuition. Snark aside, it's because the administrators are attacking a symptom - high tuition prices - and not the illness - administrative bloat and universiti…

If their Humanities Dean gets paid that much, their football coach must be a billionaire from salary alone.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#43

Post by adamfisk » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

This is a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in higher education. The increase in tuitions for need-blind schools like Brown is essentially forced donations for the families that can afford to pay. Everyone is already given financial aid to meet whatever their need is. Now, however, some of that is in the form of loans.

Alongside the increase in tuitions has been a massive increase in financial aid. Princeton really kicked this off around 2000 when they started drastically reducing loans and increasing grants, essentially competing for the top talent among lower income students.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#44

Post by pc86 » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

horsecaptin wrote: post #42

pc86 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? Because the Third Associate Dean of Humanities can't fund their $600k salary with the goodwill from a more reasonable tuition. Snark aside, it's because the administrators are attacking a symptom - high tuition prices - and not the illness - administrative bloat and universiti…

If their Humanities Dean gets paid that much, their football coach must be a billionaire from salary alone.

I'm no fan of coaches being the most highly paid public employees in most states by any stretch (especially with the athletes earning at most a free ride and a rubber-stamped business degree), but at least the sports teams are bringing in revenue, and people willingly donate to build a new stadium, etc.

The Humanities Dean isn't a revenue center for the college, and nobody is (knowingly) donating so s/he can get a new office.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#45

Post by AlwaysRock » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

Regardless of the validity of your claim I think the answer to your question is why would Brown be incentive to lower tuition to eliminate student loans (lower profits) if they could just ask for it from alumni (same profits and free good PR)?

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#46

Post by dcole2929 » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

votepaunchy wrote: post #19

> "The university plans to add $4.5 million to its financial aid budget each year to cover its 6,500 undergraduates." ~$700 per student. > "In 2016, the average Brown student graduated with a debt of $23,810, compared with $8,908 for Princeton, which adopted the no-loans policy in 2001." The increased financial aid may not even cover the annual increases in student debt. This change only covers a fraction of Brown st…

you're assuming that the money is going to dispersed equally which is unlikely. The money is intended to replace the loan portion of financial aid packages. Most students get some amount of tuition covered by grants, and outside scholarships. So for example if tuition is $10000 (not real numbers obviously), and the student get $4,000 from pell grant and another $2,000 from an outside scholarship this new pool of money Brown raises only has to cover the outstanding $4,000 not accounted for by other sources.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#47

Post by bmmayer1 » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:27 PM UTC

Improvotter wrote: post #17

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

I recently met an American here in Europe that mostly grew up here the last few years who wanted to go to NA (more specifically Toronto) for university when she could basically enrol here in a good university for a fraction of the cost. I pay less than a gran every year for my software engineering master's degree and can't fathom someone going to a different country knowing you're gonna be in debt for a large portion…

The trick is that most people don't pay full tuition[1]. It's like hospital prices: most people don't pay the sticker price and those who do are subsidizing those who don't.

[1]http://time.com/money/4777909/private-college-scholarships-2...

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#48

Post by theorique » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

bmcusick wrote: post #13

Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your pulling in ~10,000$ per person in tuition, and the average person takes 5 classes with a class size of 30 that's. 60,000$ per professor per year if they teach 4 classes, 75,000$ per professor if they teach 5 and 90k & 6 classes before expenses per class. So, the only way for that to work out is some other subsidies. However, lectures allow you to use TA's to more cheaply expand class sizes and might make it p…

Why even use TAs for lectures? There's YouTube. There's automated software for quizzes and testing. Textbooks should be open source documentation, printed-on-demand. I'm not saying remove the human element entirely, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit in education to consider where technological automation can help improve the productivity of educators. Check out how Georgia Institute of Technology is offering a r…

I'm not saying remove the human element entirely, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit in education to consider where technological automation can help improve the productivity of educators.

This x1000. With all the improvement in educational technology, it's weird that the gold standard of elite education apparently remains the lecture.

I am reminded of the quote: College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.

Part of the issue is that college-as-elite-networking-venue needs to remain scarce, by definition, if it is to retain its value. If everyone can "go to Harvard" (through online delivery, enhanced ed-tech, automation, etc) then the scarcity is lessened. When you go to an elite college, you don't just get an education, you get association with a brand that, you hope, retains and increases in value.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#49

Post by dalbasal » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

mnx wrote: post #34

dalbasal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exploding cost of education over the last generation doesn't boil down to an increase in teaching or even research staff costs. These costs are stable, largely thanks to the very low cost of junior academics. In the US, "administration staff" (everyone else) has blown up by 500% or more, proportionally. There have also been increases in non staff related costs. University' are fancier, more expensive and more inc…

This is true of many things, but seems to be politically unpopular to notice. The right will claim that prices are what prices are and cannot be changed, and the left will claim it's all in resource allocation.

Well... It's not that financing and cost are unrelated. Economics exists. I (I wrote the comment) do think that prices and costs rose in response to more available money.

Anyway, I think that these days the left and right may have changed seats in this regard. The left wants more price/cost control and the centre (centre-right and left, but more right) is talking about resource allocation, in practice defending the market driven system. The right hasn't resolved to a consistent position recently.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#50

Post by readhn » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

"One of the reasons Ivy League schools can do these programs is not only because they have large endowments but also because they have very few low-income students.."

Haha-I see so basically they have pretty much noone who qualifies for free tuition (everyone is making "too much"). Haha that's hilarious.