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How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#51

Post by tokenadult »

larrys wrote: post #50
tokenadult wrote: post #41

Both the Atlantic story kindly submitted here and a recent Business Week story http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-09/college-fina... are reporting on findings from a report by Stephen Burd for the New American Foundation, "Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind." http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/undermining_pell http://newamerica.net/sites/newame…

"being used by colleges to leverage the admission of even more average students from well-off families" Entirely possible that the mix of students at a University as far as "class" needs to be skewed a certain way as well to gain other hidden benefits..(Add: in addition to what else is being talked about in your and other comments.) For example you don't want 90% of your students coming from NY State, you don't want…

I don't how much more clear I need to make my last comment in this thread to point out that the United States problem is that wealthy family students are already HUGELY overrepresented among college students, and an actually DUMB student from a wealthy family is much more likely to be recruited by a college, admitted to a college, and supported through graduation by a college than an actually smart student from a "lower class" (your term) family. Money talks more than smarts when it comes to college admissions in the United States. Many countries consciously set different policies, and I think that is a good idea. (For one thing, among many other possible reasons for supporting such national policies, national policies that favor brains over money in admission to higher education appear to have higher sustained rates of economic growth for the whole country and lower rates of income inequality in the national population.)

From the Business Week article I linked to in my first comment:

"For example, the paper cites data that show 19 percent of freshman with SAT scores under 700 (out of a maximum 2,400) received merit aid, as did 27 percent of freshman with scores between 700 and 999. The term 'merit scholarships,' in other words, is a misnomer, the report says, because schools can distribute the aid however they please."

I do agree with you that if colleges decide the policies, they will presumably decide for the benefit of colleges, rather than for the benefit of society as a whole. What is objectionable about United States practice is federal tax-supported subsidies to colleges that the colleges distort into benefits for wealthier individuals.

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#52

Post by newbie12 »

mattgrice wrote: post #16
technoslut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's too easy to blame people who vote against raising taxes. The rate at which college tuition has gone up since I went ('95-'99) is insane. This is not including that you could graduate from college from my era and find a decent job. I don't know why the tuition fees have risen so rapidly over a short period of time but it's certainly not helping out middle class families.

University of WA cost has not gone up a single penny since 1990. It used to be that the state paid 80% of that, now it is 30%. Which is why the cost the students see has increased so much -- decrease in state funding, and indirectly, people who vote against taxes. If UW cost had simply kept pace with inflation, it would be $30,000 this year. And if WA residents had maintained their support at 80%, the student bill wo…

It isn't a lack of taxes, it is that Medicaid (a federally mandated program) is out of control and is absolutely destroying state education budgets.

"Governments’ general support for higher education 25 years ago was nearly 50 percent greater than state spending on Medicaid. That relationship has now flipped: Medicaid spending is about 50 percent greater than support for higher education. If higher education’s share of state budgets had remained constant instead of being crowded out by rising Medicaid costs, it would be getting some $30 billion more than it receives today, or more than $2,000 per student."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#53

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

matwood wrote: post #38
brudgers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repaying the loans is only one way the system might be corrected. Allowing student loans to be discharged via bankruptcy would be another, which has recently been outlawed. Thus prices for education are set in a marketplace which rewards bad loans by shifting all of the risk to the borrower.

Why shouldn't the borrower shoulder most of the risk? If we shift risk to the lender then they will simply stop lending. Then people will complain how they can't get a loan to go to college.

The borrower, the taxpayer, and anyone who holds dollars shoulder the risk to one degree or another. The "lender" has only to move paperwork in order to reap a profit. Can you not see that if the lender had to assume some risk, then the lender would probably lend more to high paying, high demand job skills, and less to skills in saturated market segments and unproductive skills.

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#54

Post by mattgrice »

saraid216 wrote: post #20
mattgrice wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University of WA cost has not gone up a single penny since 1990. It used to be that the state paid 80% of that, now it is 30%. Which is why the cost the students see has increased so much -- decrease in state funding, and indirectly, people who vote against taxes. If UW cost had simply kept pace with inflation, it would be $30,000 this year. And if WA residents had maintained their support at 80%, the student bill wo…

Can you provide sources showing this? I wasn't familiar with these numbers and would like to tell people about them.

here you go:

https://depts.washington.edu/opbblog/wordpress/wp-content/up...

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#55

Post by philwelch »

yaok wrote: post #47
jiggy2011 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic dilemna, everyone wants good public services but low taxes. The argument is often that either ways should be found to deliver better services for lower cost, or that money should be diverted away from something else instead of a tax raise. Or people want a tax increase for somebody else but not themselves to cover it.

>everyone wants good public services but low taxes. Everyone?? Typical right-winger: I want low taxes and don't care about public services (although naturally I'd prefer public services to no services). Typical left-winger: I want public services and don't care about low taxes (although naturally I'd prefer low taxes to high taxes).

Normal voters aren't ideologues, they're self-interested human beings.

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#57

Post by yaok »

philwelch wrote: post #55
yaok wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone wants good public services but low taxes. Everyone?? Typical right-winger: I want low taxes and don't care about public services (although naturally I'd prefer public services to no services). Typical left-winger: I want public services and don't care about low taxes (although naturally I'd prefer low taxes to high taxes).

Normal voters aren't ideologues, they're self-interested human beings.

Agreed. My point is just that each person tends to favor one or the other.

In truth, it's a false dichotomy for everyone except the super-rich. People could have both low taxes and good social services if they would be willing to tax the super-rich to the same extent that we did so back in, say, 1950.

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#58

Post by smsm42 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #13
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #4

I don't mean to restate the obvious, or pander to the crowd on HN, but every time we read one of these articles it needs to be stated that the current system is broken even when it is paid for . That is, for all the ink spilled over who can afford what and how much money is spent where, there are tons of kids right now graduating without a sliver of hope for a job. Worse yet, the system has been blowing smoke up thei…

I'd like to test your assumptions here. You claim : "the current system is broken" You submit as evidence to that claim : "there are tons of kids right now graduating without a sliver of hope for a job." If I ran this claim backwards (which is to say reverse its assertions) then a "working" education system would produce "most of the kids employable" ? I wonder why that defines "fixed" (or broken for that matter). I…

Higher education is publicly funded by a large degree, via all kinds of government grants and government-guaranteed loans. Unfortunately, while it is funded on a premise that higher education equals better employment - and thus better contribution to the economy, which is supposed to more than offset the cost of the funding - the reality is that many of the degrees sponsored in such way do not produce this result, and instead only transfer money from taxpayers to people running these degree programs and on the way seriously mess up lives of many people by making them waste time and get into various financial obligations based on assumptions that never come true.

This is why system is broken. If you want unbroken system, there should be a link between how much particular degree raises the income of its owner (after paying off the loans) and the public funding available to those seeking such degrees. If you want to study aspects of underwater basket weaving in medieval French poetry - be my guest, but do not expect a dime of public funds to be invested in it.

>>>> higher learning institutions should help you explore your interests regardless of the applicability of those interests to employment.

That is true only if you ignore the premise that is described above. However, since the public support of the higher education availability is largely based on this exact premise, I do not see how you can ignore it.

Re: How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich

#59

Post by smsm42 »

ruswick wrote: post #33
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to test your assumptions here. You claim : "the current system is broken" You submit as evidence to that claim : "there are tons of kids right now graduating without a sliver of hope for a job." If I ran this claim backwards (which is to say reverse its assertions) then a "working" education system would produce "most of the kids employable" ? I wonder why that defines "fixed" (or broken for that matter). I…

" Higher learning institutions should help you explore your interests regardless of the applicability of those interests to employment. " I disagree. Historically, postsecondary education might have been limited to the disciplines of academia and focused solely on liberal arts. However, at this point, a four-year degree is an effective prerequisite to 90% of white-collar job. (Irrespective of the actual value of a de…

The reason why jobs require degree is because degree is a proxy for both IQ and ability to perform set tasks in defined settings and achieve measurable results. Since other proxies are either hard to get or illegal, here we go.
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