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

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

#371

Post by wtfparanoid »

to11mtm wrote: post #185
technothrasher wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

From what I've observed (worked at a few small businesses before I got an office IT job, and even then...) it's about figuring out enough 'fringe benefits' and/or 'explanations' that are plausible with your CPA. e.x. how many profitable company car buy/leases can you do, a good explanation of why you are saving that money as a small or privately owned company (i.e. saving for expansion via acquisition/etc, but you ha…

CPA is not a great TLA as isn't global.

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

#372

Post by typeofhuman »

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…

You wouldn't have to sell the business. You could convert it from an LLC to an INC. Yes it's a lot of work but it's a better alternative to selling it.

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

#373

Post by awb »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #306
awb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, it’s possible to sell a business for 7+ figures and then have little to no income in subsequent years in which case quite wealthy families would qualify for assistance.

I find it hard to believe that total liquid assets would not be considered during the financial aid application process.

How would they verify?

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

#374

Post by walthamstow »

zipy124 wrote: post #203
spacebanana7 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually quite like the system we have in the UK. Graduates pay roughly 9% of their income above £27k towards debt repayment, and the remaining balance is written off after 30 years. Typical tuition fees are just over £9k per year. This strikes a nice balance between encouraging people to carefully consider alternative non-university careers whilst also not preventing too many people from not being able to afford i…

It would be a good system if the interest rate on the loan wasn't absolutely insane.

It was funny when they capped the rate at 7% recently. The calculated rate of RPI + 3% reached 14% and it became just a bit too obvious that it's a scam. Luckily I went in 2009 when tuition was 3.5k.

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

#375

Post by valval »

jedberg wrote: post #362
itake wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jobs that pay well are a signal that there is high demand for this skill in our society and that more people need to develops these skills. Why would we not want universities to respond to that signal?

Because the job of a university isn't just to produce highly paid workers. It is to improve society through education. And sometimes people need to learn things that don't pay well, just for the sake of learning them. People make fun of English and Art majors, but yet the majority of people consume art and writing as their primary activities outside of work (watching TV and movies). The world would be a sad, boring p…

It looks like you ignored supply and demand.

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

#376

Post by pie_flavor »

softwaredoug wrote: post #194

Is this going to create some weird incentive for me, a parent of a college kid, to go 4 years unemployed traveling the world?

It creates an incentive for you to get married, so you are the relevant family instead of your parents.

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

#377

Post by krisoft »

potato3732842 wrote: post #173
dragonwriter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How so? I know a guy who has literally millions of dollars tied up in shit that moves dirt and rocks and another mil tied up in some gravel pits. The free cash he has, the house he lives in, the lifestyle he can afford is on par with "normal" white collar professionals (i.e. not people who get a bajillion monopoly bucks to implement linked list traversals for faang). He works 60hr weeks during construction season and…

> another mil tied up in some gravel pits

> MHSA regulates him like he's running a pit mine

Sounds like he does? As per your own comment.

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

#378

Post by cultofmetatron »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #213
Nifty3929 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the real issue in american universities is that the tuition largely goes to paying for administrators. they do no teaching and largly dont' add much value to the experience. if we capped administratiors to 1 per 5 professors, that would go a ong way towards paying for tutors and services that actually do help students.

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

#379

Post by xboxnolifes »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #164
xboxnolifes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "mistake" is that the assets themselves are the source of income. Sell them off, and the income goes away too. It's the equivalent of expecting the parents to use 100% of their income to put their kids into college, which is impossible.

IF I have stock and make $XX,XXX in dividends, how is that different? IF I have own apartments and make $XX,XXX in rent, how is that different? I think the idea is that Yes, the expectation is for people to make actual sacrifice before they qualify.

Running a small business is not the same as owning stock. I can own stock and can still work and one does not affect the other in terms of time or capability. On the other hand, selling your small business is equivalent to quitting your job.

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

#380

Post by gttalbot »

This is great and all, but will we be addressing the fact that the acceptance rate of these institutions are all artificially low? The size of freshman classes are the same or smaller than the same in the 1980s, and the population of the country is much larger.

Tuition isn't the only problem here. If we want a country with social mobility, our higher ed institutions should reflect this and not create artificial scarcity.

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