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

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

#71

Post by murph-almighty » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

theorique wrote: post #48

bmcusick wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 not…

>improvement in educational technology

I'd like to point out that there's also plenty of utterly crappy educational technology that only exists to nickel and dime students for licenses. See MyMathLab.

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

#72

Post by okaram » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #65

okaram wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually ... they are probably NOT charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room and board, when you look at their costs; good education is expensive. Room and board is about $13K, or slightly more than 1K/month, which seems pretty reasonable. Rate-card Tuition is 52K, but they have a 7:1 teacher-student ratio ; If you assume each teacher makes 100K/year (not unreasonable for PhDs), that's about 13K just in teacher sa…

> High-quality liberal-arts education is really expensive, but it is because it is very labor intensive (both in students and faculty). Interesting. Wonder why it's more labor intensive compared to engineering or other degrees. 7:1 teacher-student ratio seems very good. Why can't it be 14:1, would that result in a dramatically worse outcome? (Not even sure what I mean by outcome, maybe inability to find a position af…

I guess it depends on what you mean by outcomes ... if the outcome is finding a job after graduation, probably not; if the outcome is becoming a 'better' human being, probably yes :)

Having a 7:1 teacher/student ratio means that students will have tons of contact with the faculty outside the classroom; they can walk to their offices and chat (and a lot of learning happens that way). It means 'large' classes are 15-20 students, which means there's no 'lecturing' per se, and a lot more discussions.

Doubling that rate means larger classes (40 students means teacher cannot answer all questions, assignments are made to be graded quickly etc), less interaction with faculty inside and outside classroom

Is it worth it ? I think so, and, if needed (and able), would willingly pay it for my kids. If you don't think it's worth it, or can't afford it, good state universities cost 1/2 or 1/3 as much (tuition is probably around 10K for in-state, room and board is still probably 1K/mo). Community/technical colleges are cheap for a reason, but teachers want to teach, and good students will learn from them, and get a degree; and of course, there's tons of free learning resources

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

#73

Post by okaram » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

boobsbr wrote: post #51

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…

Aren't universities charging exorbitant prices because of higly available cheap student credit subsidized by the Government?

no

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

#74

Post by njarboe » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

creatornator wrote: post #63

finolex1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that these are Ivy League universities hoping to attract the best students they can in order to boost their prestige. If Princeton for instance decided to lower tuition fees by cutting down on 'luxuries' like smaller class sizes/ unrestricted enrollments in classes, then they'd lose out on the best students to Harvard or Yale. So the only way to reduce tuition fees would be to do it across the board at o…

That seems... backwards. If the standard of admission remains the same (which is unrelated to cost of attending), lowering prices doesn't decrease the quality of the admitted student body, but _increases_ it. Lowering the cost means that additionally to the students who would be admitted and are capable of affording the school, students who are more qualified but would otherwise _not_ be able to afford attending woul…

Wealth of the students family probably has some influence on "likelihood of becoming successful later". Especially if one measures success in how much money people donate to their alma mater.

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

#75

Post by okaram » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

AlwaysRock wrote: post #45

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)?

Brown (and all other Ivy League-ish universities) are non-profit; they do not seek (or have) profit

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

#76

Post by ktta » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:03 PM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #67

ben_jones wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). Bec…

Did you explain this to the financial aid office? Generally, elite schools are in the business of finding elite students first and then dealing with FA second. But you have to make your situation clear to them. They offered you admission or you wouldn't be dealing with FA. So they wanted you. But FA is a negotiation even especially if you're in the gap and then you have to negotiate hard because otherwise you pay sti…

Often financial aid is given out to very needy students (don't even have anything as collateral for loan), and there's sometimes a quota.

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

#77

Post by CalChris » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #44

horsecaptin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

Revenue is easy. Anyone can bring in revenue. Uber brings in revenue. The more important question is is the athletic department as a whole even profitable? At Berkeley, the football coaches make $16.3M.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Cal-footba...

The law school deans make $333,847. At the same time, Cal Athletics faces largest debt among all college programs.

https://www1.salary.com/CA/Berkeley/Dean-of-Law-salary.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-04/college-f...

So your humanities deans vs revenue digression is just whataboutism.

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

#78

Post by 121789 » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

creatornator wrote: post #63

finolex1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that these are Ivy League universities hoping to attract the best students they can in order to boost their prestige. If Princeton for instance decided to lower tuition fees by cutting down on 'luxuries' like smaller class sizes/ unrestricted enrollments in classes, then they'd lose out on the best students to Harvard or Yale. So the only way to reduce tuition fees would be to do it across the board at o…

That seems... backwards. If the standard of admission remains the same (which is unrelated to cost of attending), lowering prices doesn't decrease the quality of the admitted student body, but _increases_ it. Lowering the cost means that additionally to the students who would be admitted and are capable of affording the school, students who are more qualified but would otherwise _not_ be able to afford attending woul…

I don't think you're really disagreeing with the parent comment. In order to remain at a constant level of profitability with a price reduction for all students, universities would have to reduce the benefits given to students (e.g., larger class sizes, fewer building upgrades). This would negatively impact the student's likelihood of becoming successful (like you mentioned), and would potentially cause some high-potential students to switch to other schools.

Brown is trying to get the best of all worlds: let the rich pay full price to maximize income, invest heavily in students to optimize chances of later success, and subsidize education for less wealthy students to keep the applicant pool as large as possible.

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

#79

Post by skuhn » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

readhn wrote: post #56

mac01021 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the purpose of the 120M is to create an endowment from which ~5% can be taken to provide financial aid every year. If their investments perform as hoped, it should last quite some time.

What happens when bull market eventually runs out of steam? No more free tuition?

Yes. University endowments are all tied up in investments. This is necessary in order to grow the endowments and make them "permanent", since you need to replace what you spend with the interest you accumulate. However, it also introduces risk from unwise or unlucky investments.

If there is a substantial market correction, and the investments of Brown's endowment are substantially impacted, programs like this will be scaled back or eliminated. Brown will probably be unable to spend the money raised for this purpose on anything else though.

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

#80

Post by geebee » Tue, Nov 28, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

I feel somewhat ambivalent about this. I'm glad that Brown wants to eliminate student debt, and I'm glad that low income students at ivies often pay no tuition. However, this doesn't change their essential model, which is to enroll a very small number of undergrads[1], deny admission to the vast majority of applicants, and generally lean toward affluent students.

Compare this with an elite public research university like UC Irvine or UC San Diego. I didn't say Berkeley or UCLA on purpose, I said UCI and UCSD because people often aren't aware of what research powerhouses mid tier UCs really are, that they produce far more groundbreaking research than many of the exalted ivies. In addition, these universities enroll a much larger number of undergraduates, and a much higher percentage of low income students. The result is that these institutions do far more for the US and the world - they produce exceptionally valuable research, and act as an engine for social mobility on a large scale. UCLA, for example, enrolls more low income students than the entire Ivy League combined. I believe this is true of several UC campuses, and until very recently, it was true of Berkeley as well.

In short, I don't want to see the ivies patting themselves on the back too much here for offering a sweet deal to low income students. It's a fine enough thing in itself, but let's be clear - the elite private college system is structured to ensure that the absolute number of low income students will always be very low. I'd be more impressed to hear that an ivy is scaling up like UC Irvine and offering a good deal to a high percentage of low income students, than to hear they're remaining tiny, and using a massive endowment to shower benefits on a minuscule number.

[1] Interestingly, Berkeley and Harvard enroll similar numbers of graduate students, who are often very profitable as low paid skilled labor for research labs. The divergence is at the undergraduate level.