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Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

news.mit.edu

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Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#71

Post by kasey_junk »

alsetmusic wrote: post #2

Awesome. Now let’s lower the bar further and do it everywhere. And then let’s keep doing more until students can pay their tuition with a summer job, like they could when our elders went to school. I’ll hold off on asking for higher education to be free, as the culture still pushes back on that. But a return to the former model would be most welcome.

Do we also return the facilities to the state they were in before, particularly the residential programs? College enrollment percentage? What about a near universal military draft for men?

Not that I think lowering the cost of education is a bad effort but appeals to some prior culture like they are apples to apples comparison is dishonest.

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #70
itsoktocry wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? Who's responsibility is it? Have you seen how the government operates? Why wouldn't UPENN want to help solve it?

OK, but they do exist to educate people, and have a comically large endowment to do it with that only keeps growing. I guess their plan is to grow the endowment until all human beings everywhere can get full ride UPenn scholarships?

Going up is what an endowment is supposed to do; you spend some part of the return on operational needs, while also growing the base so you have greater (nominal, and hopefully also real) capacity for that downstream.

If, over the long term, an endowment isn’t growing, it’s being mismanaged.

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#73

Post by vonmoltke »

Spivak wrote: post #48
rs999gti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence. Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? This is Philadelphia's problem, the university is just a business operating in the city.

UPenn is a land-grant institution, they are not "just a business" they were given land and money specifically to serve the public good. They're why we have engineering degrees, the government specifically wanted institutions that taught practical marketable skills and to do research in those fields.

> UPenn is a land-grant institution

The University of Pennsylvania is one of the nine colonial colleges founded before the United States existed. It predates land grant institutions by over a century. I think you are confusing it with Pennsylvania State University, which is a land grant institution.

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#74

Post by changoplatanero »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39
TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the salary. Essentially saying to sell off the fami…

It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.

Why is the price you have to pay for something dependent on how much money your parents make? Feels so unfair

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#75

Post by bell-cot »

This part seems to be getting overlooked -

> And for the 50 percent of American families with income below $100,000, parents can expect to pay nothing at all toward the full cost of their students’ MIT education, which includes tuition as well as housing, dining, fees, and an allowance for books and personal expenses.

> This $100,000 threshold is up from $75,000 this year, while next year’s $200,000 threshold for tuition-free attendance will increase from its current level of $140,000.

- even though that's the article's 2nd and 3rd paragraph.

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#76

Post by sethammons »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #53
tmpz22 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a future where a student can have free tuition but (with exception) is required do meaningful civic service work that benefits the community and country that is paying for tuition, ultimately graduating with zero debt if requirements are met. Maintaining national parks? Helping support inner city? Tutoring and improving public education? Imagine having the majority of American college students contrib…

Doesn't the federal government already do this? Work for them 10 years and student debt is cancelled?

I think they are suggesting that you would graduate debt free for having done service while getting your education

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#77

Post by shafyy »

itsoktocry wrote: post #58
nuancebydefault wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are such things in the US so complicated? Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone! That's the only fair way. Also, a set of well educated people pays itself back later in the form of mostly income and added value taxes, which provides money to keep studying for cheap for the next generation.

> Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone! I'll go out on a limb and bet people in your country earn much less than the average American, too. Why? Why don't companies just pay these people more? IT all comes back in income and value added taxes.

I don't know where the OP lives. But in Switzerland, where world-class univeristies like the ETH cost something like $ 1.5k a year in tuition, I'm pretty certain that people earn more on average than in the USA.

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#78

Post by s1artibartfast »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the salary. Essentially saying to sell off the fami…

Isn't the entire point of these assessments to look at total assets, and not just annual income?

I dont think this was an oversight or mistake. I think the expectation was that yes, people should sell assets if they have them .

Re: Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39
TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the salary. Essentially saying to sell off the fami…

It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.

The reason is because small business owners are often, by any measure that doesn’t explicitly discount ownership of the business, actually rich.
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