Colleges Are Quietly Shifting The Burden Of Tuition Increases To Poor Families

[n2doc]

by Jon Marcus and Holly K. Hacker

America’s colleges and universities are quietly shifting the burden of their big tuition increases onto low-income students, while many higher-income families are seeing their college costs rise more slowly, or even fall, an analysis of federal data shows.

It’s a trend financial-aid experts and some university administrators worry will further widen the gap between the nation’s rich and poor as college degrees—especially four-year ones—drift beyond the economic reach of growing numbers of students.

“We’re just exacerbating the income inequalities and educational achievement gaps,” said Deborah Santiago, co-founder and vice president of Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit group that advocates for Latino and other students.

The shift also runs contrary to an Obama administration push to make a college degree more affordable for low-income students. At a White House summit in January, college leaders and others promised to find ways to make degrees more affordable for the less affluent.

more

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/09/tuition-poor-families_n_4932128.html

[jsr]

1. While increasing the pay of administrators and hiring more of them

[Proud Public Servant]

2. D'oh! Wrong thread! (nt)

[reformist2]

3. Student loans are not the answer. We need to lower costs to students, maybe even impose cost control

The university system has been living high on the hog for thirty years now - they can easily deal with cutbacks to their budgets without harming their educational missions.

[Orrex]

4. As long as they continue to fund their sports programs, it'll all work out.

[Octafish]

5. Only the educated are free.

All others pay cash and stay poor.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

6. There's a whiff of B.S. to this article

Full Disclosure: I work in higher education.

One of the main reasons why "rich" students pay less than "poor" students, at least at private liberal arts colleges, is that these schools offer big discounts to high-achieving students. And these students are disproportionately from affluent areas that have better college prep curriculum, AP classes, and access to testing tutors.

For example (and neither of these schools are my employer), the ACT range at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI is 20/26, while the range down the road at the University of Wisconsin is 25/30. Smaller private schools want better students, and to that end, Carroll University offers a scholarship of $16,000 per year (renewable) to students with ACT's higher than 30. That brings the cost of a private school education down to the level of in-state tuition. And Carroll isn't alone. My employer (a small liberal arts college) offers a similar deal, as does the small liberal arts college where my daughter does to school. Another reason for the disparity that was mentioned in the article -- more affluent parents are more likely to take advantage of tuition tax breaks and credits than lower-income families.

The headline would have you think that colleges and universities are nefariously scheming to raise the tuition on just their poor students, and that just isn't the case.

Equality of access is a serious subject, but as usual, the Huffington Post has chosen sensationalism (and increased clicks) over substance.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Financial aid money is going to rich students

Or at least to students who do not need the aid:

Baum found that colleges and universities awarded $5.3 billion worth of grants beyond the demonstrated financial need of students and their families this year—including state-supported public universities, which in some cases gave more than half of their aid to students who federal formulas showed didn’t need it. Such money, called “merit aid,” is typically given to students based on academic or extracurricular achievements in high school, not based on demonstrated financial need.

“That’s money that goes to students either who have no financial need, or who already have grant aid to meet that need,” Baum said. “They’re not giving [money] only to students who can’t afford to pay, and I think that’s a really important public-policy issue. The state—no matter what the level of funding is—owns and runs these institutions with a social purpose, and asking the question of whether this financial-aid strategy is consistent with that social mission is important.”

“I don’t have a smoking gun that says for every dollar that goes to [merit aid], there’s a comparable decrease in need-based aid,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who writes about education. “But it’s fair to say that, given limited resources, low-income students are likely to lose out. And instead we’re talking about providing benefits to students who would almost certainly go to college without this aid.”

One of the reasons universities are giving money to families beyond the level of need, according to financial-aid directors and independent observers, is to lure applicants with high grade-point averages and SAT scores—who often come from affluent communities wit top-ranked school systems—which elevates the institutions’ standings in all-important college rankings. Public universities also leverage the money to keep talented students from leaving their home states to go to college elsewhere.

“We’re taking those dollars and using them to get richer kids with higher SAT scores to come to a particular institution,” Baum said.

A separate report released earlier this year by the government’s National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, showed that public universities now give merit aid to more of their students than they give need-based aid. Private universities give merit aid to about the same proportion of students as receive need-based aid.

http://hechingerreport.org/content/financial-aid-not-always-going-to-neediest-college-students_6989/

[Laelth]

8. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth