Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 487 posts

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

#141

Post by Jare »

changoplatanero wrote: post #101
mh- wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, you're reasoning about it incorrectly. What if I said: the price is the same for everyone, but people with less access to money get proportionally more assistance paying that price?

still seems weird to me. is there any other product for 18-22 year olds where the price changes depending on their parents wealth?

When I was 18-22 and living with my parents (pretty normal in Europe) I worked and contributed to the house expenses. I'm pretty sure kids of rich people don't do that. If I wanted to take out a loan, my parent's wouldn't be able to provide guarantees and thus the kind of loan and conditions I had access to would be much different than those a kid with rich parents could. In University people could also get grants based on your family income.

Those examples are varied and are not the same thing as purchasing a concrete product, yet I believe they are relevant to your question - education is a service that supports society, not a concrete product for your personal use and enjoyment. How and if you get it, relies not entirely on you at that point in your life, but heavily on your parents and in general on your family as a single economic unit to which you belong.

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

#142

Post by itronitron »

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.

>> pay their tuition with a summer job, like they could when our elders went to school.

or like it is currently for EU citizens in any EU country. Americans are getting ripped off from all sides.

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

#143

Post by technothrasher »

jjeaff wrote: post #68
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…

I can understand why they might do this. Many people who own a small business underpay themselves significantly and use the extra funds on the business to build up assets. This defers taxes and allows the funds to be reinvested without tax. They might even take out loans on those business assets. The same way the wealthy will pay themselves a tiny salary and just live off the asset value of their stock. Someone who o…

As an owner of a small family business, I have to pay close attention to making sure my salary and that of my other family members involved is "generally commensurate with our duties" or the IRS will be up my backside pretty quick. I obviously try to minimize it as much as possible, but if you drop it to something insignificant and the IRS notices, they'll adjust your income and expenses reported to reflect your non-compliance with tax code.

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

#144

Post by analog31 »

hooo wrote: post #115
currymj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ideal is that college should be very expensive for rich people and cheap, free, or at least more affordable, for less wealthy people. american universities get closer to this ideal than you might expect. the days of outrageous student debt are thankfully fading away, at least for undergraduate degrees. it would make more sense to do this redistribution through taxes if possible, but many US institutions are priva…

Why should college be very expensive for rich people?

According to the old story, the New York Times asked a famous bank robber why he robbed banks. The answer: Because that's where the money is.

The money for funding public and quasi-private (universities and hospitals) institutions has to come from somewhere. Making it equally affordable for everybody doesn't raise enough money to maintain operations. Same for funding the government.

Granted, I think all of those institutions are due for reforms, which have little chance of happening right now, but still, I think the basic funding equation can't be eliminated.

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

#145

Post by Nifty3929 »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #47
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…

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.

Because the US government will loan people very large sums to attend, which allows the universities to raise prices at will. The buyers are price-inelastic, which means that they want to go regardless of price, because they are surrounded by people that tell them that going to college is the right thing to do - and the more prestigious the better.

College in the US would be a lot cheaper if the government didn't inflate it. If you go back in time just a few decades, this is how it was: you paid for it, either in cash or with a PRIVATE loan, and people didn't see college as an automatic requirement. Then it was 1/10th as expensive.

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

#146

Post by neilv »

brewdad wrote: post #110
aidenn0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bumping this up to families making $200k seems really unnecessary and helps people that don't really need to help. My household income is right around $200k, and my daughter (still a few years from college) would definitely consider e.g. UC Berkeley, which (including housing) is half the cost of MIT for an in-state student. Free tuition would certainly make her look at MIT more closely, so if the goal is to draw th…

True. Counselors at poorer school districts frequently don't recognize that these "dream schools" are often more affordable than a state school for certain populations. The students certainly don't know it unless a trusted adult shows them and really pushes them towards pursuing it. Hopefully, some students out there will see this and realize that while MIT is crazy selective, getting in is the hardest part.

Good point. Kids of poorer school districts still have the prestigious admissions system stacked against them, in many ways, but simply knowing that Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc. may be options will lead some to look into it, and some will then have information, time, and means to make their application look plausible.

As a young teen, I applied for financial aid, to a state school, and got a nonviable response, since my parents of 6 kids could afford to contribute zero, but some bureaucracy thought otherwise.

So I went to Community College part time, while working at a store, and then was a co-op student, and worked my way up from there. After working in industry, I went to grad school, at an Ivy and MIT, and only then did I learn what successful undergrad applications tend to look like, and also that there's various financial assistance available (including some not advertised).

My story is not of the system working. I've seen so much systemic class nonsense and rigging (and sometimes bad behavior by people who feel entitled to whatever they can grab). Being at a disadvantage in those games doesn't stop once you're nominally in. But the relatively recent need-blind admissions, and family income thresholds for tuition, help a lot, especially if we can pair that with getting the information/advising about successful applications to everyone.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by Nifty3929 »

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.

In the former model, which I also would love to back to, college was cheap because the government didn't keep inflating the price with huge loans, coupled with every adult in range telling kids that the HAVE to go to college and the more prestigious the better.

Get rid of government loans, bring us back to how universities used to operate, and education will once again be something you can pay for with a summer job.

All we're doing with these government loans is transferring the wealth of society to the universities.

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

#149

Post by carabiner »

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…

I remember how the FAFSA was more complex than any tax return I've had to do as an adult (late 30s now).

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

#150

Post by colechristensen »

technothrasher wrote: post #143
jjeaff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand why they might do this. Many people who own a small business underpay themselves significantly and use the extra funds on the business to build up assets. This defers taxes and allows the funds to be reinvested without tax. They might even take out loans on those business assets. The same way the wealthy will pay themselves a tiny salary and just live off the asset value of their stock. Someone who o…

As an owner of a small family business, I have to pay close attention to making sure my salary and that of my other family members involved is "generally commensurate with our duties" or the IRS will be up my backside pretty quick. I obviously try to minimize it as much as possible, but if you drop it to something insignificant and the IRS notices, they'll adjust your income and expenses reported to reflect your non-…

Will they actually though?

You hear a lot of anecdotes both ways and it is quite hard to get a good picture of the real situation.

Post reply on HN