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Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

nytimes.com

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Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#41

Post by ggm »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #11

It's not for me to tell the wealthy & powerful how to redistribute their fruits. But... I would think it's more effective not to give so much to a single entity. Instead, provided grants that aren't tied to a particular school. Let students apply (or be nominated) and then decide. Yes, that adds some overhead. But the effect will now be ubiquitous and not limited to a single bottleneck.

Actually, it is. -This is what democracy, and giving tax powers to the state is about. We get to tell them, by virtue of what we vote for and how that translates down into tax code.

I welcome the donation, but I am suspicious of what ensues. Given the mix of public and private tertiary education and the mix of debt and grant funding, It's pretty complicated. If this levels-up Johns Hopkins against the ivy league, remember its still private education. It won't neccessarily redress all the imbalances inherent in university study. It might help, it might hinder. Its not clear

(on an individual level, I am sure it will help enormously. I'm trying to draw a distinction between individual benefit, and societal benefit as a whole)

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#42

Post by mcny »

I think the real answer is:

1. Higher income tax across the board

2. Decreased wages for college and University staff. Fewer executive and bureaucratic positions. Just at one CUNY college there are about one hundred positions at or above the level of a department chair. It has fewer than 17k students enrolled.

3. Eliminate all competitive sports across all schools and colleges. This is just noise that nobody needs.

4. Reduce mandate of colleges and universities. No, a college is not supposed to decide whether an assault took place. Also, it makes no sense for a college to have to pay for campus police. Who came up with this nonsense idea?

5. Focus on reducing costs. Reduce if not eliminate most regulations state legislatures have forced on colleges and universities. Consider getting rid of freaking people soft to manage student records. Does it make sense that students have Employee ID numbers (EMPLID)? Who makes these decisions?

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#43

Post by rhizome »

yelloweyes wrote: post #32
kristianp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just insane that 1.8B should be spent on just Johns Hopkins. This doesn't sound like anywhere near the most efficient way to help the most students who are missing out on places because the institution looks at their ability to pay. Does Bloomberg have an alterior motive to limit his donations to just his Alma Mater? Does he just want a wing of the library named after him or something? I'm frustrated reading th…

1.8B is not that much, really. at 50k tuition, that's only 36k people.

Hey as long as we're calculating here, let's talk about 1.8B as tax revenue. What tax rate would that be for someone like Bloomberg? Now apply that across the board to everybody making that much, how much tax revenue does it come out to? Extrapolating even further, based on today's split of public money going to education, what would this mean for public school (including universities) funding?

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#44

Post by synaesthesisx »

DannyBee wrote: post #38
gnulinux wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bizarre I think. Are we supposed to pretend all CS degrees in the world (or US?) have the same value as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley et al?

For undergrad, yes. Having interviewed 500+ people at this point (and screened many many more resumes and github accounts), i'd there are rarely, if ever, meaningful differences in quality of candidate based on where they got their CS degree from. I see much greater variation in masters/graduate candidates than in undergrad.

Agreed - I've interviewed candidates with no CS degree that outperformed ones from Harvard etc. In fact many of the best ones were self-taught...

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#45

Post by cwbrandsma »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #37
docbrown wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This has been the standard for a while now. Why does higher edu charge more? Because they can!!! Partially true but there are many other reasons why. Personally, I always thought it was administrative bloat which in turn put higher costs on the students. A 2015 study[0] shows that the real culprit could be as simple as less state support per research institution.[1] >more than half of core educational expenses at “p…

> "A 2015 study[0] shows that the real culprit could be as simple as less state support per research institution" But that's still a "because they can" reason.

Or have to. They built up with a certain amount of support from the government in mind, then the government dropped the ball. The schools then increase because they have too. But that doesn't explain the rising costs of private colleges.

At the same time, as the father of a high school senior, you quickly find very few kids pay the sticker price.

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#46

Post by sdinsn »

gnulinux wrote: post #7
master_yoda_1 wrote: post #3

Until you won't fix hiring discrimination based on school name, you can't fix the problem. Just see around in silicon valley you can find the example.

This is bizarre I think. Are we supposed to pretend all CS degrees in the world (or US?) have the same value as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley et al?

No, that's not what he's saying- He is saying we should attempt to evaluate individuals without being biased by name recognition. There are poor students at Stanford and excellent students at .

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#47

Post by intralizee »

I can't imagine if you have that kind of money, you wouldn't have had a team of people calculating and rationalizing every scenario for the action taken.

The thing that bothers me is how universities keep raising the cost for students to have an education. Nothing seems to prevent it and everything seems like a joint effort in having the new generation be worse off by having no real spending power for years compared to the previous.

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#48

Post by gammateam »

gesman wrote: post #18

" ... The Credit Suisse report has an entire chapter devoted to “the unlucky Millennials” who have been hit by rising debt and poorer job prospects. And it’s true. Recent reports from the Treasury Department show that the US government owns nearly $1.5 trillion in student loans. That’s pretty sad when you think about it: the US government’s #1 financial asset is debt owed by tens of millions of its young people for u…

The US has always been addicted to serfdom.

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#49

Post by devoply »

intralizee wrote: post #47

I can't imagine if you have that kind of money, you wouldn't have had a team of people calculating and rationalizing every scenario for the action taken. The thing that bothers me is how universities keep raising the cost for students to have an education. Nothing seems to prevent it and everything seems like a joint effort in having the new generation be worse off by having no real spending power for years compared…

That money would be better spent lobbying government to fix the education cost disease in the US. A billion dollars can do a lot of lobbying.

Re: Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid

#50

Post by gammateam »

mcny wrote: post #42

I think the real answer is: 1. Higher income tax across the board 2. Decreased wages for college and University staff. Fewer executive and bureaucratic positions. Just at one CUNY college there are about one hundred positions at or above the level of a department chair. It has fewer than 17k students enrolled. 3. Eliminate all competitive sports across all schools and colleges. This is just noise that nobody needs. 4…

Greater passive revenues for the government is just a bandaid for a symptom.
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