Number of needy students drops at top universities

[bleedingheart]

http://www.postgazette.com/pg/04326/414682.stm

"The poor are getting harder to find there and on other highly selective campuses nationwide, judging by the number receiving federal Pell Grants, which are targeted to low-income families. Since the early 1990s, the share of Carnegie Mellon undergraduates with them has declined from about 20 percent to 12 percent, or 256 fewer students with median family incomes of under $30,000."

...

"The poor are getting harder to find there and on other highly selective campuses nationwide, judging by the number receiving federal Pell Grants, which are targeted to low-income families. Since the early 1990s, the share of Carnegie Mellon undergraduates with them has declined from about 20 percent to 12 percent, or 256 fewer students with median family incomes of under $30,000."


We are going back in time, welcome back to the Gilded Age...

[whistle]

1. When Bush finishes his second four years, there will be a lot more...

...poor students then there are now. The real question is will there be still financial grants to help all the poorer students.

[bleedingheart]

2. I doubt it because with these tax cuts to pay for something has to give

and it will be the "social" programs that people mistakenly didn't believe applied to them because they "thought" social programs were welfare...and well they didn't get welfare.... But they forgot that student loans are also social programs...

[elepet]

3. Are you aware of the appropriation bill voted on yesterday?

[bleedingheart]

4. I saw that some education grants were extended but

that is no guarantee they will be there three years from now. Also some of them aren't increasing enough in value while tuition costs are rising...
So if the max on a Pell Grant is $4050 is that per year or for the entire college term...either way it isn't keeping up with the times. Some great universities that poor kids should have an opportunity to attend cost as much as $40,000 a year in tuition...

[elepet]

5. appropriations

for education onall lower levels and for college students were cut dramatically.

[Delphinus]

7. But,

wasn't he touting education in the third debate? Go back to school? Get retrained?

If kids can't afford to get into colleges, what can they hope to spend their lives doing?

We are quickly and surely becoming a two-class society. Rich and poor.

We are so screwed.

[shrike]

12. Community colleges

Didn't you hear him in the debates? That's where the people who aren't "his kind" go.

[Liberty Belle]

19. No there won't.

He'll kill them off with the draft.

[LosinIt]

6. If $30K/year & they expect you to pay $3000 that's still 1/10 of income

There is no expendable income at $30K per year. Add to that the cost of books which is easily another $400 a semester and it is just not within reach.

[gkdmaths]

20. 400 bucks for book(s)?

its more like $400 a book. I spent almost a grand on books this quarter and will spend an additional 2-300 bucks for supplementary texts for the next two quarters.

the costs of textbooks has gotten out of hand.

the real cost for college students, outside of tuition and books, is crap like parking (50 bucks a quarter) and normal wear-and-pocketbook-tear like food, gas, housing, phone calls home, internet access and all the other jive that has consistently risen in cost, but my grants havent increased. in 5 years of college I've been late to class twice because I didnt have money to pay for gas, but I go without "real" food 3 days per week on a regular basis. Real food is anything other than $2.00 worth of cellophane-wrapped crap from the vending machine outside the lab.

serious students prioritize, but that usually means they have their water shut off or lose 15 pounds a quarter.

at least I only have 2 more quarters untill I have both degrees.

whew.

[DarkSim]

8. Never paid a single cent of school fees or medical bills.

yup,
Grew up in Finland. Never had to pay for school or hospital from daycare at age 3 to graduating from the best tech university at 21 :p

[mazzarro]

10. And in the United States conservatives will hoop and holla about

it being communistic and big waste of money. I envy you Finnish people and Scandinavian countries in general.

[prolesunited]

14. Oh, but that would be like SOCIALISM

:wow:

We can't have that here. It's evil. :P

[proudbluestater]

18. Nice to meet you Finland!

We are the *only* industrialized nation without national health care.
We have nothing left to spend on PEOPLE'S needs because we must first reward the corporations with tax breaks (61% of corporations pay 0 tax), next in line are the wealthy who also get tax breaks. After that, we pour 420 BILLION dollars each year down a rat hole called "DEFENSE SPENDING."

I think I will have to move to Europe. Canada at the very least. I'm tired of living in a country that only cares how much money its average citizens can contribute to the country's coffers.

Back to the topic of education, I don't understand why anybody is surprised that the enrollment is down. The cost of college has increased by 26% since Bush took office. Funny, my pay did not get raised nearly that much.

[booksenkatz]

9. Well, let's face it

The Bushes and their ilk need someone to mow their lawns and polish their silver and clean their toilets. If they let the help get uppity, wanting "education" and outrageous things like that, then the help might get a clue that they are being shat upon by the Bushes and their ilk and might vote accordingly... can't have that, now, can we?

I'm thinking Russia circa 1916 myself. If I remember correctly, the Romanovs didn't come out of that too well.

[durablend]

11. Don't forget the shoe shiners!

They'll need those and LOTS of them...no reason to go with a machine when they can get the "personal touch" from a human (who they can kick in the ass when they're done)

[Sabriel]

13. As someone posted in the other thread

100,000 students without support means 100,000 more people who might consider an attractive offer from the military. Gee, what a coincidence.

[MountainLaurel]

16. Got it in one.

I work at one of those community colleges that are supposed to be the great hope of the working class -- you should see the recruiters there at campus events, pushing flesh like Larry Flynt. It's even worse at my college -- more than half our students are immigrants, and the recruiters play up that "faster road to citizenship" angle. Of course, they neglect to mention that they can't be citizens if they're dead.

[struggle4progress]

15. kick for compassionate conservatives knifing the poor

:kick:

[Igel]

17. There's still something else ...

going on here.

At UCLA in the mid-late 90s the family income of students was sharply bimodal. Any kid chosen at random had a very good chance of being poor or wealthy; but there was a smaller chance of his being middle-class than either of the above.

The point: the poor, esp. the very poor, had a very good chance of getting lots of aid, even at UCLA when the budgets were being slashed. And I'm not talking loans: I had thousands of dollars of loans, but some of the undergrads I knew, after four years, had none. (One guy managed 4 years + law school ... he boasted he made money from his need-based grants.)

The wealthy didn't care.

As Pell grants are cut, the government'll probably lower the family income threshold for receiving them.