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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

#471

Post by itake »

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…

> sometimes people need to learn things that don't pay well, just for the sake of learning them.

why?

> yet the majority of people consume art and writing as their primary activities outside of work (watching TV and movies).

yes... but we don't need many of those skills, which is why you typically see 'winner take all' situations with a single person servicing this need for millions.

We don't need universities to pump out 10,000s of English and Art managers if a 100 artists can service the entire population.

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

#472

Post by lobsterthief »

itake wrote: post #254
jedberg wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it punish vocations?

just a guess, but upfront money needs to come from somewhere, presumably everyone else that is working, including vocations.

Wouldn’t college graduates also be working and contributing money?

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

#473

Post by rldjbpin »

from my personal experience (an outsider trying to apply), the admission process was by itself intimidating enough to keep me from even applying. let me explain.

thanks to purchasing power parity and exchange ratio gap, i was already from a broke family that would meet the cutoff for most universities a decade ago. however, the act of paying hundreds of dollars for application fees was enough to not make it like you lose nothing by trying. to put things to perspective, a few hundred dollars, which could cover a handful of applications, were equivalent to the take-home salary for a month during that time.

maybe i was unaware of some concessions or perhaps there has been improvements on this front, but i wonder if some applications might still be this hard pressed despite these initiatives.

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

#474

Post by Shocka1 »

lolinder wrote: post #435
balderdash wrote: post #259

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.

> not to mention the outlays for extravagant projects like sports centers Just a note that for a lot of schools the sports programs (football especially) are actually a profit center, not a cost center. Situations obviously vary, but it's entirely plausible that a new sports center could be an investment that pays itself off rather than an extravagant expense.

Right. I tend to wonder sometimes if the bigger football schools are actually football teams first, and educational institutions second. The rise of legalized/mobile gambling seems to have supercharged it.

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

#475

Post by araes »

janalsncm wrote: post #366
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they could even if they wanted to. All problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them, and the local governments may not be cooperative or efficient enough to use the money. There are chemically engineered drugs that will gigafry your brain into addiction in one dose getting better every day. Police departments all over the country/west seem to be ineffective at enforcing order, courts are too delayed an…

At the same time there are many places that seem to have figured it out. The way Philadelphia chooses to run their city isn’t the only way.

Detroit's actually kind of impressive the drop that Detroit's managed to obtain in the last four years since Covid. The jump at 2020 was probably horrifying to the citizens, yet afterward, really serious downward trend. 262 murder / 969 woundings (2020) to 149 / 417 (2024). ~57%/43% of the 2020 numbers. Pretty impressive from a crime and gun violence perspective. Down below pre-Covid numbers while a lot of cities are still elevated.

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

#476

Post by jorvi »

adastra22 wrote: post #228
s1artibartfast wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this was inventory they were counting, sure. But you can’t sell part of a small business. Let’s say the parents own a restaurant, and the value of the land, building, and kitchen equipment is a few million. Do they sell an oven from the kitchen to put you through school? Sell the parking lot? It’s an all or nothing thing. The business needs all its assets to function, and shouldn’t be considered any more than for…

Situation:

You have parents A, B and C.

- Parents A own a small business.

- Parents B sold their small business two years ago, and put the money in the stock market.

- Parents C just scrimped and scraped and over the years saved up money equal to parents A and B.

I’m not sure why you’re so hellbent on giving specifically parents A a free pass. Why the unequal treatment?

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

#477

Post by s1artibartfast »

jorvi wrote: post #476
adastra22 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was inventory they were counting, sure. But you can’t sell part of a small business. Let’s say the parents own a restaurant, and the value of the land, building, and kitchen equipment is a few million. Do they sell an oven from the kitchen to put you through school? Sell the parking lot? It’s an all or nothing thing. The business needs all its assets to function, and shouldn’t be considered any more than for…

Situation: You have parents A, B and C. - Parents A own a small business. - Parents B sold their small business two years ago, and put the money in the stock market. - Parents C just scrimped and scraped and over the years saved up money equal to parents A and B. I’m not sure why you’re so hellbent on giving specifically parents A a free pass. Why the unequal treatment?

Thanks for explaining this much more clearly than I did.

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

#478

Post by aiisjustanif »

Shocka1 wrote: post #474
lolinder wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not to mention the outlays for extravagant projects like sports centers Just a note that for a lot of schools the sports programs (football especially) are actually a profit center, not a cost center. Situations obviously vary, but it's entirely plausible that a new sports center could be an investment that pays itself off rather than an extravagant expense.

Right. I tend to wonder sometimes if the bigger football schools are actually football teams first, and educational institutions second. The rise of legalized/mobile gambling seems to have supercharged it.

Of course they are, they make the money, a lot of it.

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

#479

Post by ajdude »

d2049 wrote: post #33

When I was touring colleges as a high school senior I met someone who had gotten into MIT but whose family could only afford to send one kid to an elite college, him or his sister. He decided to go to a state school which was a lot less expensive but whose academics weren't close to the same level. This stuff matters to people.

I'm the first person in my family to have gone to college, and we never really had any money.

Still, I've always been interested in science growing up. I was programming video games and building little robots before I was 10 and envisioned myself being a robotics engineer when I got older. I got into Johns Hopkins for a double major of physics and astronomy, I couldn't actually afford it, didn't win enough scholarships (they only awarded a very small subset), and my family didn't have the money.

In the end I ended up going to a local college for computer information systems, and while I love my IT job, it's well under six figures, and I'm $60,000 in student loan debt that I'm probably gonna be paying off for the rest of my life.

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

#480

Post by ric2b »

rfergie wrote: post #271
Engineering-MD wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case you may like how it’s done in the UK. it’s technically debt but in essence works as a graduate tax. The government pays for your education with a loan. You then only pay back 9% of your income over a certain income threshold. You do this until you pay back the loan or 30-40 years have passed. So in practice this is a graduate tax.

For most taxes you expect higher earners to pay more but this is not the case with student loans because high earners pay of their loans quickly whereas lower earners end up paying far more in interest. An actual graduate tax would be far less regressive than the current system

Could also have a minimum duration (for example 3 years) where you pay even if you go over the original loan amount.

That would mean people that get great paying jobs right out of college would pay more than they even borrowed, but it would be justified because the degree would likely have had a big impact if it was so soon after finishing the degree.

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