That's a rather cynical view. Education in America is a business, but it's so much more than that. Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government. There are plenty of great state schools where you can get education basically for free. Despite the red tape, there is plenty of great research getting done, and plenty of professors who genuinely love to teach and want to help students succeed. For people who can't quite cut it in serious academic pursuits, there are city schools and community colleges that give good, inexpensive education and offer financial aid.
Sometimes it can be useful to look at the world through cynical glasses, but it shouldn't be the only pair of glasses you use. You might completely miss a lot of beauty in the world around you.
"Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government."
... As long as your parents are rich enough to hire a lawyer to handle the paperwork. I am an Ivy alum, of middle-class parents, and this "help" required me to submit literally hundreds of pages of paperwork. (I counted.) And any mistake, no matter how small, automatically disqualifies you from all help. So every year, there would inevitably be some minor mistake and I would have to lawyer up and threaten to sue the school. I was lucky enough to know one who helped me pro bono. What about everyone else?
Half of Yale's class is from the top 2%. This is not a coincidence.
"There are plenty of great state schools where you can get education basically for free."
... As long as you win the birth lottery, and your parents live in someplace like California. Only a handful of public universities even make the top 100. And even public schools are hardly "free", often costing >$10K/year just for tuition.
"You might completely miss a lot of beauty in the world around you."
Yale, according to their 1099, has a 45% profit margin. 45%. That's higher than Microsoft, Google, and Goldman Sachs. And every year they, and the other Ivies, call up all their alumni and beg for donations to their bulging bank accounts. It's disgusting.
My financial aid grant was approximately 75% of tuition (before considering any federal loans).
I filed a FAFSA, and some direct paperwork required by the University. The paperwork amounted to less than 10 pages each year. I am not including the paper count of tax documents from my family.
There were several financial aid officers, but I worked closely with one. At every step of the process she was available to answer questions. I made several mistakes in my paperwork, even one after submission. My aid officer helped me with each issue.
My father passed away when I was in school. After I reported this to my University through my financial aid officer, they immediately waived all remaining tuition requirements (excluding those covered by federal loan grants). I did not pay a dime after that.
My family made about $60k a year, before my father's passing. $30k after. We own a house. I think we were middle class, but I am not sure how that is defined.
Whether this anecdote is a true reflection of the wider system or not - this made me smile. Thanks for sharing :)
I have been exposed to a similar situation (though not from a US university, I was lucky enough to attend a private school in the UK. The tuition fees are roughly comparable): My best friend's Dad worked as a Vet until he had a heart attack. He lived, but couldn't work for a long time.
The school waived the final year of fees for my friend (~$52,000) - to my knowledge they have never requested it since.
> submit literally hundreds of pages of paperwork. (I counted.)
I recently went through the college admissions process. And I didn't count but there most certainly weren't hundreds of pages required for financial aid. Especially since the vast majority of it can be electronically filed and since there are standardized processes for applying for financial aid across different universities (i.e FAFSA).
> no matter how small, automatically disqualifies you from all help
Seriously exaggerated. Mistakes can be rectified by calling/directly contacting the financial aid office.
> Yale, according to their 1099, has a 45% profit margin
> Only a handful of public universities even make the top 100. And even public schools are hardly "free", often costing >$10K/year just for tuition.
I just finished my PhD at a state school this year. I've gone to state schools through my entire education. In the past decade, every school I've attended has had a professor win a Nobel Prize. I've also averaged less than a thousand dollars a semester in tuition. I'm also not from California. My state has repeatedly ranked in the bottom 10 on SAT scores.
I'm not doubting that going Ivy cost a fortune and was a huge hassle to acquire aid. I'm also not suggesting that you didn't get a fantastic network of connections through your Ivy classmates. Buying a network is expensive. However, if you're looking to get an education, those can still be had for a reasonable price.
There's a lot of annoying paperwork, but it was something I was able to file on my own on a shitty internet connection as a teenager growing up in Bangladesh who with just my dad's 1040s.
All of the Ivys I got into offered to cover 100% of my cost of education. If you're poor and smart, they give you a shot.
I'm gay, so my parents wouldn't pay or help me in any way. The public colleges in my state basically told me that if I didn't have the money, I should get lost and try again when I was 24. (This was despite routinely having the highest standardized test scores in my entire high school and a solid GPA. I usually test in the 95-99% range nationwide.)
Meanwhile, many of my far stupider peers with richer/more benevolent parents have already graduated. The only difference between me and them is access to tens of thousands of dollars in tuition money. Colleges are nothing but a business, and if you think otherwise, you are very lucky to have been in a situation where you have never had to wait out half a decade in poverty because of where and how you were born.
Your situation sounds awful and I'm very sorry you're going through that.
But, what's the alternative from the universities' point of view? If they gave extra financial aid to students disowned by their parents, every parent would claim to hate their child to save on tuition.
The alternative would be to prioritize academics over profits. In civilized countries, tuition is usually free, and college entrance standards are much higher.
I know an english major who graduated still unable to distinguish between "your" and "you're." Who would you rather have in college, her or me?
I don't think anyone is under the illusion that education is free. However, it benefits society as a whole, and not everyone may be able to afford it. So, it is often in the interest of society to make good tuition affordable, regardless the background of a student.
Of course, it is also beneficial for the student. But for that we have the tax man :).
Yes, taxes pay for education for all. Considering that a large part comes from taxes on income, which means the rich pay more than the poor. Damned socialists, giving the same education opportunities for everyone!
(Well, unfortunately it's more and more the middle class that pays due to tax evasion and fiscal advantages to the rich)
Please don't take this as a slam, but I'm curious about the interaction between "routinely having the highest standardized test scores in my entire high school" and testing in the 95-99th percentile nationwide.
Some fuzzy intuitive probability suggests that for every 20 people in the high school, there should be one testing at or above the 95th percentile nationwide. The emphasis word "entire" suggests that your high school was large. Was it awful? What's the story there?
Without getting into a huge argument with an internet stranger as to the exact extent of my stupidity and/or intelligence, it'd probably be wise to note that nearly 2/3 of high school seniors are going to college now. Someone who is in the top 1-5% of high school seniors really shouldn't have the difficulties I did. I'm not trying to brag, I'm just trying to say that my stats were decent and I wasn't a slacker.
It was really baffling to me that colleges preferred to take people who got 2s and 3s on their AP tests to someone who scored 5s, so long as they had parents who would fork over thousands of dollars. At a poorly funded rural high school where most people were members of FFA, outscoring my classmates wasn't hard, and there weren't many collegebound to begin with, outside of the people with welloff families. It was frustrating to see them get to go instead of me because I didn't have tens of thousands of dollars for the tuition bill. (I mean, a lot of them were in the low to mid twenties on their ACT scores...)
It was really baffling to me that colleges preferred to take people who got 2s and 3s on their AP tests to someone who scored 5s, so long as they had parents who would fork over thousands of dollars.
In the US, higher education, like most everything else, is a business. That's not cynical, that's a fact. With the exception of a small handful of wealthy schools, most universities are looking out for their bottom line. Don't let the glossy brochures and cozy advertising copy confuse you. And you might as well get used to it, because the country is moving further in that direction.
On a more positive note, try to google:
scholarships for gay kids
There aren't really many opportunities for glbt scholarships. I appreciate the thought, but it's not like trying to google it has never crossed my mind.
I'm curious about this. In several states - I thought all states - a sufficiently high ACT score will get you either a free ride, or a half-cost ride to any public university. Mid-20s is enough to get half. Is that not the case in your state?
Absolutely not. I was well into the 30s on mine, and the financial aid office still told me to fuck off. I suspect it varies a lot from state to state, hence a lot of people's condescending attitude and disbelief.
This is interesting to me. I went to a college in North Dakota and most of the kids worked full-time jobs and took loans out in order to get their education. They often told me this is what their parents did and expected them to do the same. They've worked hard their whole lives, what's working 30 hours a week and paying off your tuition in the meantime? For many of them, it was a walk in the park.
I had to do the same thing. My parents were only able to afford two years, the rest was on me. I got some partial academic scholarships which helped, but I had to bust my ass to go, and it made it that much more fulfilling. Nothing makes you feel better than being able to tell someone in an interview that you worked and paid your own way through college without the aid of your parents.
There are a ton of options available to smart kids. Also, don't kid yourself that you need to go to an Ivy League school for an education. My roommates all got jobs at large companies and two of them were chosen over Ivy league grads. They both came from a state college engineering program.
If you really want to go, then go. There's SO MANY opportunities out there which weren't around when I was coming out of high school. Two year technical degrees can get you a $50-60K a year job. There's code schools, online colleges, and other avenues you can explore. Hell, maybe you don't want to be a programmer - there's a HUGE deficit of skilled labor right now. I have a brother in law who's a welder who makes a low six figure salary because his job is in such high demand right now.
Don't let life get you down. If you're driven and want to succeed, then go out and do it. There's no many less barriers today then there were 10 years ago.
A four year university in my home state is $20,000/year. Going out of state to almost anywhere is even more expensive (california is up to nearly $40,000/year), and if you do find somewhere cheaper, you need the savings for a move, which is difficult at the poverty level.
Many colleges are completely unaffordable, even working full time jobs:
"The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. If a minimum wage worker is employed full-time (forty hours per week for 52 weeks), that worker would earn $15,080 annually."
And that's IF you can find full time work, which is difficult in many areas. I had to live off of half that for several years because I couldn't find anything better for a long while. If I went to a community college, they'd only give me $900/quarter in student loans when the cost was more like $1500/quarter for tuition. So, I couldn't afford community college either, for quite a while. It was only once I was working 35-60 hours a week (it was a fulltime job, but weird work schedule) that I was able to afford to both not be homeless and attend community college. As a result, it took about six years to get even my associate's degree (between the waiting and the working).
There are a lot of barriers. I think a lot of people on HN don't realize how rough it is out there for low income people right now.
There used to be a tax status that allowed independent status for a student, opening up the benefits for which they told you to wait until you were 24.
I guess too many people tried gaming it and they've locked it down. It was a good law exactly for the reason you describe, it sucks that it was abused into a state requiring shuttering.
I sympathize with being shut out by your parents, but I'm despondent over the very rapid change in the apparent expectation that parents are the only way to pay for college. Especially for a brilliant kid, going to college was not an impossible task.
My parents' contribution to my college was ~5k in a savings account and a beater after my first year so I could come home time to time.
I worked 30-40 hrs/wk to offset the loans I needed with a full-time course load. And it was a good school outside my home state, where I got in-state tuition but didn't qualify for a single other grant / scholarship.
For context, this was 2003-2008, I'm not talking about decades ago.
I'm sure the private / federal loan programs have shored up some because of the crisis, but I would be quite surprised if funding and education was really so impossible, or that it was impossible to work for a few years then go when you were 20.
Funding and education really IS that impossible. I think you underestimate just how expensive college has become, especially in states that don't value educating smart people. I graduated into a recession, and even finding enough work to pay rent was incredibly difficult, because I was competing for minimum wage jobs against people with college degrees. The area was and is incredibly economically depressed.
I also had health problems that went untreated as a kid that made it hard to work. No college also meant no healthcare. Of course, I had to work anyway because I'd be homeless if I didn't.
It's hard to pay $20,000/year for college when you can't find more than $7,000/year in work. $7,000 is barely enough to keep you fed and housed as it is.
(Even at age 24, you don't start getting pell grant money until you make under about $10,000, incidentally.)
My view of the college funding situation is colored by the fact that after taking the PSAT I received monthly mail from the university of Tulsa offering free tuition, free board, and a stipend if only I would agree to attend their school. (In retrospect, I think that would have been a good idea... ah, hindsight.) I'm pretty sure there are other scholarships around that require more than the absolutely zero effort that took.
I would have killed to have someone offer me that. :( You were lucky to have so many options available to you; I applied for 40+ scholarships at the time and placed as runner up for one and was awarded one other. It wasn't enough to meet even in state coa, sadly.
6 years later I got a full tuition science scholarship at a community college, but that took a ridiiiiiiculously huge effort and it only lasted for a year since I wasn't an 18 year old anymore (meh). I'm still incredibly grateful to my chemistry professor who helped me get it, though.
Thank you. I hate having to explain myself over and over again, especially when so many people just call me lazy, stupid, etc...but it's a serious problem, and if someone with my academic chops has trouble, then that really says a lot about how awful the system is for everyone else.
I think a lot of it is that people don't want to accept that their own college degree was more a factor of luck and money than anything else. Passing classes isn't hard at all, paying for them is.
I just looked it up, and tuition for my last semester (Fall 08) was $5,300. The two years before that, average tuition was 800/semester less. It is not that much more expensive.
I hadn't seen the health complication until I read through some of your other comments from the last few days. I think it makes you an exception though and not definitive of the state of education...
tl;dr: The numbers don't line up to suggest college is unavailable to kids whose parents won't pay.
It's going to mean loans. Even with 9 months of a really generously compensated internship (to Midwest standards, at least, I grew up in WI and went to school in MI), I still left college with north of 50k in loans.
Ohio University, cost is ~24k a year, more than 12k of which is room, board, transportation and personal. Ohio State this year is 21k, more than half of which is the room and board. For both, tuition and books is about 11-11.5k.
You'd hypothetically already be paying the rest with the 7k / year job that's keeping you kicking.
4.5k in the stafford loan means, 6k in other loans a year to fill it in at today's cost, which is probably 20-40% higher than it was 5 years ago.
4 years of loans, even if they're shitty, "credit ready" loans at personal loan rates, still only leaves a fictional Ohio traditional student with $45k in student loan debt at the end of the degree. $60 if they take a victory lap.
In any STEM discipline, paid internships and co-ops are also possible, which would further reduce the loan load required.
So in summary, funding an education is not impossible. Yes, the student will be paying for it for a while. I'm still paying on my loans and I still will be for a few years. But I'm sorry, not having parents foot the bill generally isn't yet a barrier to a high-quality education.
Oh, I know plenty of people without health problems who can't afford it either. Your parents have complete control over your access to college until age 24. If they refuse to sign the FAFSA, or refuse to cosign private loans, you are 100% screwed in most states.
>It's going to mean loans.
Well, no shit.
>It is not that much more expensive.
It is when gas is $4/gallon instead of $2/gallon, and the economy makes it much harder to find a job of any kind. Not to mention tuition itself is increasing at about twice the rate of general inflation.
" On average, tuition tends to increase about 8% per year. An 8% college inflation rate means that the cost of college doubles every nine years."
>You'd hypothetically already be paying the rest with the 7k / year job that's keeping you kicking.
Hypothetically, sure. In reality, if you don't have 7 days a week of 24/7 availability, you can't get a job in many places.
Most of these low end jobs will have you coming in at 7AM one monday, and closing at 11PM the next. You can't plan your courses around work since there's no regularity.
In the best case scenario, you have a job already and try to change availability, but in that case they'll often slash your hours to barely nothing. Can YOU live on 12 hours a week of minimum wage?
> 6k in other loans a year to fill it in at today's cost
>4 years of loans, even if they're shitty, "credit ready" loans at personal loan rates, still only leaves a fictional Ohio traditional student with $45k in student loan debt at the end of the degree
You cannot get these without a cosigner or guarantor. When I was 18, I tried banks, sallie mae, online options, etc for (roughly) this amount and was completely denied. Hell, I couldn't even get a credit card for any amount, even through my bank.
Even when I later had a better fulltime job making 20K/year, I was again declined for loans. (At that time, I had 3 credit cards and awesome credit.)
>In any STEM discipline, paid internships and co-ops are also possible, which would further reduce the loan load required.
You have to have access to loans in the first place to get there.
>But I'm sorry, not having parents foot the bill generally isn't yet a barrier to a high-quality education.
Oh, I see what the problem is. You don't live in reality. I'm talking about people who live in the US, FWIW.
I didn't have the money to at age 18. I mean, I had less than $500 in my bank account usually because rent and gas and food ate up my minimum wage earnings so quickly.
It's what I've done now that I have access to independent student level of stafford loans. I got a 35-60 hour/week job for 2 years before I moved which helped too. (Full time jobs are very hard to find due to the economy, where I'm from.)
Eh, plenty of people go to college with little or no money, and there's plenty of scholarship opportunities out there. My roomate and I were the only two people I knew in College who weren't there 75% or > on loans. Community college while working is also an option, where good grades can also assist in getting scholarships in addition to getting you credit - I took several and personally found them higher quality than the University courses I took.
> I'm gay, so my parents wouldn't pay or help me in any way.
I did community college while working. It took 6 years to get my associate of science this way, only to find out that my state engineering college would "accept" the credits but I'd still have to enter as a freshman in their engineering department.
Luckyily I have access to enough loans/savings now as an independent student to move to another state (if I'd been born here, with their $5,000/year tuition, I'd have graduated with an engineering degree by now...), but I really wish people would stop recommending community college for tech people. Some states just see it as another way to waste your time and make more money off you. If you're a transfer student, many colleges won't give you any institutional aid, either, which means you're limited to places you can afford on a $5,000 pell grant (if you can get one) and yearly stafford loan limits.
I loved my cc profs, I just wish the four year colleges couldn't get away with so much snobbery/bs.
Lgbt don't count as "minorities" for scholarships. Believe me, I've looked. It's all race based stuff, for the most part. I have a physical disability too, but it falls into that same abyss of not being pc attention worthy enough to get tons of free money.
Bullshit. I received scholarships for college, I paid for two years of my undergraduate with LGBT ally scholarships. Those are ally scholarships, there are one metric shit-ton more scholarships for LGBT youth. There are entire foundations set up for this.
Don't lie just because you haven't done your homework. Here are 3 databases if you're too lazy to google LGBT scholarships.
Yes, there are scholarships for people in wheelchairs. I'm not in a wheelchair. My stuff is rare and has no funding behind it.
I'm glad that you think that being a sexuality studies major is a noble goal, but I'm interested in tech (which eliminates a great deal of them--most require a sociology major or something similarly specific), and I'd also like to point out that leading a gay youth initiative (as is often required by these scholarships) is hard when:
1. You're the only out person in high school.
2. Your school won't even let you into NHS because you are gay. No teacher was willing to stand up for me because they didn't want to lose their job. Can you imagine the difficulties of getting one to volunteer to sponsor some sort of gay group? It'd never happen.
3. Your parents almost send you to a gay reparation camp because they're fundamentalist christian.
4. You live in a flyover state in the middle of nowhere. (many of the scholarships are for specific states, too.)
It's great that you had the resources to land a glbt scholarship, but they're mostly unavailable to disadvantaged students. You may want to rethink your ally status if you're going to go around bashing gay people for not trying hard enough when there's already usually quite a lot on our plates.
"I'm glad that you think that being a sexuality studies major is a noble goal, but I'm interested in tech"
Most of those scholarships require an essay, nothing more. Next time, read before you comment.
"and I'd also like to point out that leading a gay youth initiative (as is often required by these scholarships"
The scholarships that I've run through that talk about leading anything only require leadership skills and experience. No mention of specific gay leadership. And even if they did, your example is exactly what they're looking for, and the exact reason that I received money in the first place. I was from a high school with less than 200 people, no parents in the picture, in the midwest.
I'm not saying that your life has been easy, I'm saying that your arguments seem very poorly thought out, and that you're simply grasping for someone to blame for your place in life right now.
"It's great that you had the resources to land a glbt [sic] scholarship, but they're mostly unavailable to disadvantaged students. You may want to rethink your ally status if you're going to go around bashing gay people for not trying hard enough when there's already usually quite a lot on our plates."
I was a disadvantaged youth. Homeless at 16, graduated from a GED program, went to community college and a state school. Now I teach at a university after a decade or so working in sales. I'm not saying that everyone can do it, or that I am even the rule, maybe I am just the exception. What I am saying is that these scholarships are EXPRESSLY designed for disadvantaged youth. That's who they're made for. I'm going to say it one more time - disadvantaged youth are who scholarships, grants and other sources of aid are designed for.
I never bashed gay people. Just you for not doing your homework. I can't believe that you are hiding behind your sexual orientation as an excuse. It's 20and fucking13; the youth of America don't give a shit about who you want to have sex with. Those youth are also the ones you're competing with in the tech industry. Stop using it as a crutch, and start taking responsibility for your own choices. Being an ally means that I support your good choices and am here to help you when times get tough. Being an ally also means that I don't have to put up with bullshit excuses from young people, regardless of sexual orientation.
As for this:
"Yes, there are scholarships for people in wheelchairs. I'm not in a wheelchair. My stuff is rare and has no funding behind it."
If you're willing to disclose what the condition is, I am willing to help you find scholarships/aid for sufferers of it. I guarantee there are scholarships or other aid available.
"Deaf Queer Youth Scholarship
The Deaf Queer Resource Center sponsors a $500 scholarship for deaf lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex or queer students"
Well, I'm not deaf.
"Gamma Mu Foundation Scholarships
The Gamma Mu Foundation awards $19,000 in individual scholarships to gay men"
Nope, not this either.
"Malyon-Smith Scholarship Award
The American Psychological Association's Division 44 (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues) offers this award to support graduate student research into psychological issues "
Not interested in psychology, also, still worrying about undergrad.
"Live Out Loud Annual Scholarship
...the scholarship is open to graduating high school seniors in the tri-state area (NY, CT, NJ)."
Well, shit, I guess that's out too.
"The Messenger-Anderson Journalism Scholarship and Internship Program offers several $10,000 scholarships ($5,000 for the first year and $2,500 for the second and third years) to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students pursuing a degree in journalism and communications "
Not a journalism major.
"NGPA-Education Fund Scholarships for Aviation Students
The National Gay Pilots Association (NGPA) Education Fund provides scholarships to members of the gay and lesbian community (including straight allies) who are pursuing an aviation career as a professional pilot."
Not a pilot.
"National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA)
NLGJA provides several scholarships and awards for "students who demonstrate a commitment to providing fair and accurate coverage of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community."
Not a published journalist.
"NWSA Graduate Scholarships in Lesbian Studies
This award provides financial assistance to graduate students doing Master's thesis or Ph.D. dissertation research in lesbian studies."
I think I would rather punch myself in the face than go to school for "lesbian studies." Also, not for undergrad.
"Roy Scrivner Research Grants
The American Psychological Foundation (APF) sponsors the Roy Scrivner Research Grants for graduate and postdoctoral research concerning the study of lesbian, gay and bisexual family psychology and family therapy."
Not in grad school, not into psych, etc.
"Transgender Scholarship and Education Legacy Fund (TSELF)
TSELF awards several scholarships for transgender-identified students in the helping and caring professions, including social services, health care, religious instruction, teaching, and law."
Not going into "helping and caring" professions.
"An Uncommon Legacy Foundation, Inc.
The Lesbian Leadership Scholarship program, for both undergraduate and graduate students, provides awards for projects that address lesbian social, cultural and educational needs. Consideration will be given to academic performance, honors, personal or financial hardship and especially service to the lesbian/gay community. Candidates must have a minimum 3.0 GPA, have financial need, and demonstrate a commitment or significant contribution to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community."
Didn't have "financial need" on paper from ages 18-24, and it's hard to "demonstrate a significant contribution" when you're trying to survive.
"Point foundation"
Applied for this, didn't get it.
"Queer Foundation Scholarships
The Queer Foundation (http://queerfoundation.org) sponsors a high school seniors English essay contest to promote queer studies. Winners receive $1,000 scholarships for study in queer theory or a related field such as queer medical, legal, or social issues."
Not going into "queer studies."
Everything else is regional or athletic, and the one regional one for my area requires: "dedicated time and energy to the GLBT community and toward GLBT and HIV/AIDS issues."
"SOLGA Kenneth W. Payne Student Prize Competition
"The American Anthropological Association - Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (SOLGA) offers this award for a scholarly anthropological paper, written by a student, on a gay or lesbian topic. The prize consists of a $400 cash award and a letter of commendation from the Prize Committee. (The prize is not specifically for tuition, but rather is intended to reward excellent graduate student papers.) The deadline is in mid-June.
deadline is July 15."
>The prize consists of a $400 cash award
Oh, I really hope I get this one, everyone knows that $80,000 in undergrad can be paid for with a $400 grant.
It'd also be wise to note how many of the few scholarships that do exist specify that you have to be a high school senior, something I no longer am. I applied for 40+ essay scholarships during the time that I WAS one, though, and it wasn't enough.
I don't really see any reason to disclose my disability to you when you're rude and condescending enough about GLBT things: "It's 20and fucking13; the youth of America don't give a shit about who you want to have sex with."
1. It wasn't 2013 when I went to high school.
2. There are still plenty of asshole homophobes in the youth demographic, which is why the suicide rates are so high. You are an incredibly insensitive person, and I hope for their sake that you don't work with glbt youth.
> you could get straight-married (for legal purposes, obviously) to become independent from your parents under the law.
Is that all it gets? He could also, you know, sell his kidney, or something similar, in order to get into university. What kind of society are we talking about if you need to cheat to get something that you should get in every other civilized society? What other compromises would you be required to make in order to get an education? Join a political party, rob the bank, start working as a prostitute or porn actor?
Unfortunately the industry adapted to the financial aid, and and by now the price of tuition has completely gobbled up any discount the aid may have provided. Sure, people who couldn't have gone to school in the past are able to do so, but many of them are getting saddled with a crippling amount of debt.
I know that the price of tuition should increase naturally, as all prices do, but its been doubling the rate of inflation and that's fucked up.
There are good aspects to the education system, but there's also a lot of good reasons to be cynical.
Scholarships and grants have also been rising, and the net price -what people actually pay -has been rising much more slowly than that. For private colleges, it has actually fallen since 2006/2007: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-pric...
>Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government.
When "help" is defined as hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans that cannot be discharged, I laugh.
My family was in a below-average income bracket, and as the oldest son, my parents didn't have much money for us to go to school.
When I got into MIT and other elite schools, I was elated. Until I found out that "help" meant debt up to my ears. Eventually I realized it was unlikely to carry positive ROI over a full scholarship at any "lesser" university, which I was fortunate enough to earn.
But let's not act like the elite schools are handing out free money to go there. My test scores, GPA, athletic performance, and extracurriculars made me a very desirable choice for most elite schools. The only problem was that my family's unremarkable history and lack of funds wasn't a good match.
When did you go to school? Nowadays, every elite school gives grants rather than loans, and (for example) Stanford pays for all tuition for families making under 100k (and throws in room and board for < 60k).
I don't know if it is that things have changed recently, but I did see that schools were handing out free money (at least MIT did when I went there). I got sizable debt-free aid + small (4k/year) loans and I couldn't be more grateful. I know many friends that got much more aid, including monthly stipends to pay for food and other expenses.
It does seem that this is the exception rather than the rule, so I don't usually bring this up. You explicitly mentioned MIT though...
> Students who are financially disadvantaged get help, both from the universities and the government.
I hate to add any more cynicism to this, but student aid is often higher ed's version of price segmentation. Out of state people pay the top prices, in state pay the middle, and low income pay a bit less (but often more over the long run due to loans). I know many people who will be paying interest on their student debt long after they would have paid back the entire principle. I was lucky and had parents who encouraged me to pace myself and go without much debt, but the system pretty much is stacked to rope in low info 18 year olds and extract as much from them as possible.
Stanford is the most affordable school in the country. Pretty much bar none. If your family earns under $100k / year, you go for free. Many families with incomes in excess of $200k still get some form of financial aid.
They do have a business going, to be sure, but it's not built on gorging people on tuition. Many (most?) don't pay that number. And even it is extremely reasonable if you think about what the market clearing price would be.
That's only if you're 18, though. If you have to work a while before college to keep a roof over your head, or try to take classes at a community college, you basically disqualify yourself from virtually all financial aid and grants.
Most colleges don't extend financial aid to transfer students (even if they guarantee full need for other students), most take ability to pay into account when determining transfer admissions (even if they go on and on about making it affordable, apparently this doesn't apply if you're not a college credit virgin), and quite a few elite colleges don't accept transfers at all (and if they do, it's usually 5x more competitive than their normal admissions process).
This is actually an issue that bothers me a great deal. I don't like that college is, culturally, something you do once. If you've touched a college credit since high school, you're not pure, and you won't be considered alongside the more worthy students.
This phenomenon contributes heavily toward the view that college is more about signaling who you are than that you achieved anything in particular while you were there. Once admitted to University X, "University X" is branded on your soul forever.
That said, on the dual topic of elite colleges accepting transfers & financial aid, the university of california system is set up to take transfer students en masse, and gives an admissions priority to students coming from the highly affordable california community college system. Berkeley and UCLA both accept such transfers. I don't really have an idea of the specifics of UC financial aid, but I do know the system offers a purely merit-based scholarship (Regents). CA is gay-friendly too, for what it's worth.
"I don't like that college is, culturally, something you do once. If you've touched a college credit since high school, you're not pure, and you won't be considered alongside the more worthy students."
My actual experience with night school and tuition reimbursement was the opposite for more or less mid-level private uni (real school, 100 years old, not some kind of fly by night loan scam). If you're 18 and a HS senior they want you to jump thru hoops like a trained seal and write essays and take standardized tests and fill out applications and find references and ask for permission to be admitted and hope for weeks you'll be lucky, but 19 as a professional studies night student, "oh, hand me your check and a single page emergency contact / demographic type form, and you're all good" Uh, say what, thats all the hoops you want me to jump thru? Things may have changed a lot in the last decade, but it used to be the school was doing the student a huge favor if the student was 18, but even if you're too young to drink, the instant you applied thru professional studies, you were doing them a huge favor, probably because financially, you were.
Transfer student experience was the same. Oh you attended (insert medium sized name), well fill out a one page form, have them send us a transcript, and hand me a check and its all good. Uh, say what, you make 18 year old HS students jump thru hoops like trained seals but all I have to do to get in is let you know my next of kin in case of medical emergency, and give you a check and a transcript? What?
Now for transfer students a big game is only allowing X credits where X is pretty small, or not permitting certain classes to transfer in at all, which is how I got to take calculus three times, once in HS, and twice, at college and uni. So they may have screwed transfer students over once they admit them, but at least the admittance process was painless.
This is the opposite of my experience! I still had to write essays and jump hoops. Also, my community college didn't know how to fill out transcripts or forms for colleges out of state (they looked at the common app like it was from another planet) and as a result I got called a felon by one of the colleges I applied to. As it turns out, my CC people weren't checking off the "to my knowledge, not a felon" box. When I found this out, and asked them to check it, they told me that it wasn't their department even though it WAS the department that handled those things. Ok, whatever, but if you are too lazy to take it over to the right department, could you at least tell me I need to take it there to get it done before accepting it for processing? Geez. The receiving college was pretty rude about it too, the lady seemed pretty convinced the unchecked box was proof of my criminal status (I've never been arrested!).
I also had a hard time getting them to mail anything to New York because the address "wouldn't fit" in their computer system, so after two "lost" transcripts I found out they'd left off chunks of the address and thought this wouldn't be a problem. My suggestion of "write it by hand" was rejected. Very annoying. Of course, I was told "our transcripts always arrive" at the in state college. Well, thanks, I totally want to stay here after the crap your college system has put me through.
California is very far from me--I actually ended up on the other coast looking for cheaper college (CUNY system, which I feel is similar in some ways). It looks like out of state tuition at community college is about $5000 in California, which isn't so bad, but most places require you to live there a year without taking any classes in order to become a resident for college purposes (so you'd have to take a year off between community college and the four year, possibly), and finding a way to survive without a degree or any social network would have been quite difficult. I wouldn't really have had the money to move out there when I was younger; it's taken me this long to get to the east coast, which is a lot closer compared to California.
I think it's a really great system for people who live in state, though! (or states close to California) I've heard some things about impacted classes, but it sounds like California has their CC -> 4 year transfer system set up much better than a lot of places. The regent scholarship sounds great, but it'd have been a huge gamble to try to move out there for it, since you won't know until you're applying to the four year school if you'll get it or not. There are so many unknowns, when tuition is this high. The CoA for Berkeley for example is $33,000 for in state and over $50,000 for out of state.
Why is paying for college so much harder than getting accepted to one? Ugh.
That's also false. Financial Aid from the government is based off of need. Grants are for anyone who qualify. If you haven't found any that you qualify for, you haven't looked hard enough.
http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/nontraditional.phtml
All colleges extend financial aid to transfer students, they have to. Yes, there are scholarships for straight up freshmen through senior students at the home institution, but there are ALWAYS scholarships specifically designed for transfer students.
They do not take ability to pay into account when determining transfer admissions, that's illegal. They put together your 'aid' package based on your ability to pay. It, in NO way plays into the admissions process outside of that, and any proof you have of that is grounds for a lawsuit.
Elite colleges do accept transfers, find me one that doesn't. Is it hard to transfer into them? Of course, they're e.l.i.t.e., it's hard to get into them any way.
I don't know why you're spreading this misinformation, I assume it's ignorance. Stop.
After looking through your comment history, I now understand why you're spreading this nonsense. You're a young, pissed-off undergraduate student just finding your place in the world. My advice to you, having lived through this stage: We're not all out to get you. Read more, think more, and talk less.
Well, the response I got from the colleges I emailed to ask was "we don't give out scholarships to transfer students." This went for public AND private schools in a variety of states. Often, the public schools that give transfer scholarships only give them to students who are already in state residents. Alternately, the transfer "scholarship" often just reduces some of the out of state surcharge.
" Financial Aid from the government is based off of need. Grants are for anyone who qualify."
Key phrase: anyone who qualifies. When I was 18, I qualified for a $4500 stafford loan and nothing else. If I went to a community college, this dropped to about $800-900/quarter, which wasn't enough to even pay tuition.
Incidentally, the best need based grant you can get from the government is a pell grant. This maxes out at about $5000/year, and you can only get it if you make less than about $10,000/year (and your parents have no income, or you are an independent student).
"They do not take ability to pay into account when determining transfer admissions, that's illegal."
This is only true for public universities. Private can do whatever they want.
"Elite colleges do accept transfers, find me one that doesn't."
Princeton.
"You're a young, pissed-off undergraduate student just finding your place in the world."
I'm not 18 anymore, and haven't been for over half a decade.
As a current Stanford student I agree that Stanford has great financial aid, but "bar none" isn't true. The same paperwork got me substantially better (need-based) financial aid offers from a few Ivies than I got from Stanford.
> If your family earns under $100k / year, you go for free
False. Pell Grant recipients (which typically earn less than $30k / year) paid on average $5,332 to attend Stanford in the 2010-11 academic year [1]. I would link to the actual Department of Education database with the forms filled out by Stanford showing this, but the government shut down has left us all without access.
Education, like religion, politics, and almost everything else in America, is first and foremost a business. Never lose sight of that.