341–350 of 487 posts
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…
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$9 billion annually [1] qualifies as not spending it, I guess. I wish people actually checked figures before ranting online. 1- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231...
The page you linked shows their revenue is $9.93B/year and is greater than their expenses. So clearly they're not spending down the principal.
UPenn’s revenue includes “sales of assets” and “investment income,” i.e., taking some part of the endowment annually to fund their operations.
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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-…
Are you saying that the IRS will literally officially modify your recorded / reported income and expenses to be different from what you reported, at their discretion, even if based on what they think are plausible reasons? That still seems like heavy handed overreach to me. Should they not instead contact you for clarifications about the ambiguity?
It’s just depressing. Sorry, I’ll go back into my hole.
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It would be similar if your stock dividends were your sole irreplaceable means of support. So, you sell your stock and give the money to MIT. Now you can’t buy more stock, and therefore have no future income. Permanently ending your career to send your kid to college is an unreasonable sacrifice, in my book.
I wouldn't want to make that sacrifice either, but I also understand that im not entitled to tuition assistance as some sort of human right
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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 infl…
European colleges are incredibly thrifty, though. German universities for example can lack dorms, student unions, and professors lack TAs to grade homework (so homework isn't graded) and your entire grade depends on one final. We could do this in the USA also, or perhaps even bother with online universities, except those are generally considered not very useful as degrees.
While I think this is well meaning, I’d be much more impressed by institutions actually cutting costs, The ratio of administrators to students is insane as is the faculty ratio at most universities, not to mention the outlays for extravagant projects like sports centers and student centers.
Thank you for this comment; articles on the rising costs of college almost always uncritically treat it like a law of nature, and rarely have I seen articles that attempt to study in-depth the extent to which college administrations have become bloated, self-perpetuating jobs programs. All while at the same time departments are cut, professors are expected to do more with less, and more and more classes are pushed on…
https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-o...
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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 infl…
This is a common myth. This might explain why Harvard or MIT tuition is high but not the average college. Tuition mostly reflects staff costs and those have been going up due to Baumol's cost disease. Dentists, along with many other industries with its main cost being highly educated staff that haven't managed to scale production like online brokerages, have had a similar price increase since 1970.
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I live in Belgium, we earn quite a lot less on average indeed. However why would we need so much money? We can go to hospital, or even 20 times visit a dentist for that matter, without expensive insurance and without the fear of bankruptcy. We can have kids without fear of not being able to pay kintergarten.
> We can have kids without fear of not being able to pay kindergarten. FYI: Public kindergarten is 100% paid for by gov't across the US. I don't think any public schools in the US have tuition. (That said, there is no magical money. It is paid for by local taxes.) Where did you hear about this myth? Also: In Belgium, can you really go to the dentist 20 times? Is there any good reason to allow this in a public healthc…
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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 infl…
> 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. ...if you go back in time a few decades basically everything was about 1/10th as expensive. e.g. "Adjusted for inflation, $1.00 in 1960 is equal to $10.43 in 2024" according to https://www.dollartimes.com/in…