Posted on 07/28/2013 1:01:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last year I wrote about some of the myths surrounding higher education in the U.S. You also have to beware of colleges acting to redistribute wealth.
Following is an anecdote with which I am intimately acquainted: In the mid-‘90s, there was a family (a white family which you will see is a significant detail) whose daughter had a sterling high school record that guaranteed her acceptance at all but the very top colleges in the country. This girl had everything—a nearly perfect grade point average and strong SAT scores, leadership and citizenship awards, three MVP awards in two different sports, and also additional extracurricular activities in school and community service outside of school.
One college that accepted this girl had annual fees of over $25,000 (more than twice that today, which shows how rapidly college costs have increased). The girl’s family had only a few thousand dollars of discretionary income after the unavoidable expenses of mortgages, taxes, insurance, food, transportation, etc. Surely that thriving, well-endowed college would offer such a well-rounded student some financial aid, right?
Nope. Not a penny. The college’s financial aid office was committed to increasing educational opportunities for minorities by giving them nearly full scholarships. Essentially, white kids, even ones like this girl with the exceptional range of accomplishments, were expected to subsidize the education of other, often less-qualified, students.
While offended by the college’s plan to redistribute wealth racially, this was a private college. The family felt that the college had a right to practice social engineering if it wanted to. The family, though, wasn’t going to go into debt to pay for this plan, so the daughter went elsewhere for her highly successful collegiate career.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
My son was denied an academic scholarship solely on the basis of his skin color. The administrator actually had the gall to tell my son he would have qualified had he been a minority. We ended up paying every last dime of his tuition. That, in itself, is fine with me. What really chapped my hide was the fact that I had to pay much higher tuition rates for my son because government was propping them up. It’s sort of a double whammy. #1 You don’t qualify for government help because you’ve saved $ and you’re the wrong skin color, and #2 you get to pay more because of all other folks who are getting a free ride.
To console ourselves, we parents eagerly seize on studies that show that our children will "do just as well" at so-called 2nd tier schools, as they would have done at the "top tier" schools they couldn't afford to attend.
And it is true that, yes, our children did well at those 2nd tier schools, and graduated with little or no debt.
But there is more to the story than that. The big BUT is that in some fields (economics for example), our childrens' lack of "top-tier" degree keeps them locked out of the best jobs --the ones that deliver the best pay and best opportunities to advance.
Those jobs go to the Ivy League grads --who, like Barack Obama the Columbia/Princeton grad, are often less smart and less genuinely accomplished than your child. But the Ivy grads have something your child doesn't ... that elite imprimatur.
1. Lawyer
2. Stock Broker
3. Politician
Better to save your money, go to a local college, get a job as an engineer, businessman, or general practitioner.
Do yourself and the world a favor.
PuzzledInTX: “A government grant can sometimes be a very good investment.”
Government handouts sometimes result in positive outcomes. I’m not denying that. But you’re comparing individual outcomes versus the generalized impact of government handouts. For every success story, there are far, far more negative outcomes. Government simply cannot do anything efficiently. It’s not possible. Bureaucracies, by their very nature, are inefficient.
Government grants are essentially theft. You are taking money from other people against their will. It’s just not the same thing as a grant from a private charity. In that case, the givers are rewarded for their (voluntary) sacrifice, the charity is typically much more efficient both in picking who gets the aid and how they use it, and the recipient is rewarded by not using the force of government to take from others.
Government mandated wealth redistribution, in any form, is always theft. The fact that your outcome turned out great is irrelevant. You basically took money from me and mine so that you could benefit. Like I wrote, the tuition I paid for mine was higher because government handouts made it easier for the colleges to raise tuition rates.
I’m not condemning you. I just want you to understand what really happened. Government programs are very, very deceptive. When the government takes money out of my pocket to give to someone else, it masks what’s going on. Most Americans would NEVER go up to someone, open their wallet, and steal cash, but it’s all cool when government does it. After all, it’s a government program not someone’s money—but it IS other people’s money.
Could you elaborate on this? It is practically unheard-of in the last several decades.
I'm sure there are many FReepers who have ultra-qualified children who were accepted to Ivies --but offered zero in scholarship funds-- and would love to know what made this young white man the exception!
Kid is an Eagle Scout, mid-Atlantic region, worked hard, not on any athletic teams, spent some time abroad in a European country, parents divorced, mother had health problems, on food stamps, father abroad, not a lot of money there either.
Here is something about the Ivies’ financial aid for “middle class” families, which in expensive parts of the country means “financially struggling.” Supposedly need blind admissions.
http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/college/ivy_league_finaid.asp
You want a kid to get an Ivy scholarship? find out what sports the Ivy gives scholarships for. When I went to high school a football player who graduated maybe 40 or 50 out of 300 got scholarship offers to Harvard, Princeton, Yale. Number 2 got into Princeton, no scholarship, and the rest of the top 10 (including me) the thin envelopes.
Student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy prior to 1976. (See where the above tuition inflation graphic starts.) They haven't been since. Do away with that, and no sane lender would lend $200k unsecured for a college education. Few parents would be able to produce the funds, and tuitions would, of necessity, need to fall.
Yes except that my only grandchild is hispanic so I’ll milk the system for whatever I can. It’s human nature.
The Boston bombers were recipients of scholarships.
Bingo, except that tuition would never fall low enough for most working class parents to afford them. But the loans are federally guaranteed, so the lender would have nothing to lose even if defaulted on. But you’re right. Student loans should be dischargable in bankruptcy just like credit card debt. Both, after all, are uninsured. It’s just that simple.
The Oregon program is designed to benefit the professors, not the students. The legislators know they won’t get all that money back. They don’t care. The Massahs at the university plantation must be paid, and they will be.
The people who are manipulating the system are the elites, not the minorities.
Think about it. The children of the elites (those earning income in the top one tenth of one percent) are well connected and well financed. However, they are not necessarily intellectually brilliant. Above average, yes. Brilliant, no.
Competing against them are the children of the vast middle class, some of whom ARE quite brilliant. So, how to cripple the future of these children, to prevent the emergence from among them of another Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. How to reduce the chance that somebody brilliant will come along and displace them?
One way is to saddle middle-class grads with so much student debt that they will be forced to immediately get a regular job, rather than have the freedom to contemplate a startup which will bring one of their bright ideas to market?
The non-brilliant affirmative-action student poses no threat to the elites. The brilliant-but-middle-class student DOES present a threat.
“There are some careers, like engineering, where a degree really is necessary and the government employees make less than their free market peers.”
No. This isn’t true. Engineers in government tend to be less employable in the true private sector. When all benefits are included they will earn the same or more than an average engineer in the private sector - and they tend to be less bright, less capable, and less deserving of ‘average’ compensation. Since you’re generalizing, so am I, granted.
Wow, interesting graph.
We, and many others I know, did college on a budget. Our state has programs that allow a high school kid to take community college classes that count as high school and college credit, no tuition required...so AA earned with no tuition, and a high school diploma awarded at the same time without ever having to step foot inside a HS (we homeschooled till 9th grade, then transferred to the CC in our town.)
Merit scholarship in our state is not decided on race but purely on merit. Good SAT or ACT scores, high GPA and community service will allow merit scholarship for tuition at State U...so last 2 years of Bachelor’s is paid for.
Our kid did grad school at a private U in our area...good reputation Graduate School...high GMAT earned him a TA job...which equaled free tuition and a small stipend in exchange for working for a prof.
Live at home and your only costs are gas and books. Like I said, I know several families whose children have gone this route, we weren’t an isolated case (and btw, if they go straight through they’re finished with grad school at 21 or 22 because of the head start the AA gave them during high school.)
steelhead_trout: “Bingo, except that tuition would never fall low enough for most working class parents to afford them.”
I don’t know if that’s true or not. For one thing, what’s wrong with working one’s way through college? That used to be the norm decades ago. Even now, junior colleges are fairly reasonable, and it’s still possible to pay one’s own way through college.
There’s another unknown. Government drives everyone else out of charity. If I knew of a poor student who needed help, I’d be inclined to donate myself, but why donate when government is standing by with boatloads of cash, even for worthless degrees? If all the government handouts stopped (and they should), people could always set up charities to help worthy students.
Finally, everyone isn’t suited for college. That’s another problem with the current system. There are many jobs that don’t really require degrees, and there are many students who don’t have the intelligence to earn the hard degrees. There are even more intelligent students who lack the motivation to learn. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some people may need to grow up a bit before going back to school.
My point? Government is distorting higher education just like it’s distorting virtually everything else. Government will always be rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. It can’t be efficient. It’s too big. Get government out of the job of being fairness arbiter and wealth redistributor, and you’ll encourage traits that build a society. Right now, government is tearing America down. We either stop that now, or it will stop itself when it falls apart (my odds are on the latter).
You’re talking in generalities and so am I. I was only using government engineers as an example. I think they legitimately need an engineering degree, and their pay is more closely aligned with their non-government counterparts.
There are many other government jobs that pay far more than their civilian equivalents. The government gets around part of that by saying their jobs require degrees and by inflating the actual job requirements. They then compare that to non-government jobs. What they don’t compare is the actual work that people do.
Of course, this is an education thread. My point was simply that government feeds the higher education beast. Plus, it’s over credentialed, meaning it requires credentials where they aren’t needed. That provides cushy government jobs for people with generally worthless degrees.
My daughter had her heart set on going to Notre Dame about 10 years ago. She had a 4.3 GPA and 1360 SATs along with multiple club/sports participation and being Catholic. The only kid they picked from her school out of 5 applicants was a party girl who was a double legacy. They also gave full rides to several black kids she knew online. When she got rejected, it was too late to apply for the full ride scholarship she clearly qualified for at ASU, so she ended up having to pay regular tuition there.
Disagree with the article only in that the current system is not a racial redistribution system as much as an ideological redistribution system. Colleges, which are run 95% by liberals, can charge 5 times what their services are worth simply because the money comes from the liberal government, which takes it from the productive taxpayers, so liberal professors can make 6 figure salaries to tell their kids to stomp on Jesus. It’s nothing but a huge scheme to fund and spread liberalism. No conservative should support this corrupt system - you gotta send your kids there and pay the price (while less qualified minority kids go for free) but you don’t have to send them checks to support the school once you don’t need their services anymore. Most of what’s taught in school can be taught online much more efficiently than at a college (or public school for that matter).
Eliminate government programs to subsidize college, and you’ll quickly see tuition rates fall.
I am not sure about that. Catholic and private bible type grade schools and high schools are very expensive without government subsizing. For example, my kids go to St. John’s in Annapolis and it 7000 per student. The High School is even more! The bible type schools around here like Key School is 30,000 per year. I think you need to rethink you prediction.
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