Net tuition and fees cost, University of Pennsylvania vs. typical state university.
As I explained yesterday on Slog, the High Tuition/High Financial Aid model proposed by Gov. Gregoire’s higher education task force, doesn’t exactly work if the plan doesn’t guarantee high financial aid, and from what I’ve seen of it, I’m just not confident that this proposal does. What might satisfy me? Well, for one, a philosophical shift in the task force’s objectives:
Along with more money from tuition, the task force’s proposal would lessen the impact to lower- and middle-income families by creating a private financial-aid endowment, with a goal of raising $1 billion in the next decade.
Change “lessen the impact” to “eliminate the impact,” and then back it up with reasonable safeguards, and you might just get my support, along with a enough Democrats in Olympia to make this a reality. Otherwise… piss off.
As the chart at the top of the post illustrates, it is possible to charge sky-high tuition, while keeping a college degree affordable to lower- and middle-income families. This chart compares the net costs at my admittedly pricey alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, to those at a typical public university, and as you can see, once financial aid packages are factored in, Penn can turn out to be just as affordable. In fact, more so, as Penn’s aid comes entirely in the form of grants, meaning its students no longer graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in loans.
That’s the way the High Tuition/High Financial Aid model is supposed to work. Those families that can afford to pay full price do; those who can’t, pay what they can afford. At Penn, students from typical families earning less than $90,000 a year receive grants equal to full tuition and fees; students from families earning less than $40,000 have their room and board covered too.
And it could work that way in Washington state too, if both the money and the commitment is there to move to this model without making a four-year degree less affordable to lower- and middle-income families.
So in the interest of moving this conversation forward, I’d like to suggest that my friends in the legislature consider this very simple but significant amendment to the task force’s proposals: give our four-year universities the freedom to set tuition prices as they see fit, but impose a needs tested cap on the net cost to in-state, lower- and middle-income families.
In the end, I couldn’t care less where the sticker price of a UW degree falls in relation to that at comparable public universities, and neither should should students or lawmakers. All that matters is the net cost of that degree in relation to what the student can afford. And if we as a state can embrace and defend this principle, then the move to tuition flexibility can be a net plus for our higher education system as a whole.
David’s post is a very disturbing comparison of true costs (after grants, loans, and so on) of attendance at his alma mater U. Penn.
The point he makes is that the real cost of a student attending a private ivy, U. Penn, may not be any more than the costs for the same student attending a public ivy, such as UC Berkeley or UW.
This magic happens because many of the private ivies have such large endowments that they can offer scholrships to a large part of their student body. There have even been suggestions that when these endowments are very large, tuition itself should be free. The benefits of the private ivies tax free ability to grow their capital may be a lesson for the public sector trying to fund higher education.
There is, however, a missing piece in David’s analysis .. different students attend the UW, or UC, than attend U. Penn.
The private Ivies, especially the truly elite schools like Harvard and MIT, cater to a very, very select group of students. These students are not necessarily from well-off families, since these elite schools now offer true scholarships, rather than loans, to any student admitted who has a financial need. Nonetheless, the selectivity of the public ivies means that the student bodies overwhelmingly reflect a collection of patents with the means to provide these kids with great opportunities.
The population of students at even the best of public ivies is very different. A school like the UW admits 5600 kids, while Harvard admitted about 1600 kids. UW. moreover, offers those positions primarily to students in Washington State, population 6 million, while Harvard selects from at least the population of the USA, 600 million.
Public ivies do offer much of the opportunity that the private ivies offer, but we make that offer to a much larger part of the population.
Somewhere in this year’s freshman class, I suspect there are several hundred students who could not get into a private ivy but who will take advantage of the wonderful opportunities the UW does offer.
SJ @1,
No doubt there are many differences between schools like Penn and UW; I only use the chart above as a means to illustrate how sticker price and the net cost diverge when financial aid is taken into account, the point being that high tuition does not necessarily mean higher net cost for lower and middle income students.
But the fact is, there are many students at the UW whose families could easily afford to pay the full price of educating their children, a price they would pay under a high tuition model, leaving more funds to offset the cost for lower income families, as well as fund the university as a whole.
Picking a nit, let me point out that MIT is not an Ivy League school.
Picking another nit, I would ask for SJ’s thoughts on Cornell, which is both an Ivy and (partially) a public university. Not only that — both Cornell and MIT(!) are legislatively-designated land-grant institutions under the Morrill Land Grant College Act.
Picking still another nit, when referring to the population of the United States, SJ misspells 300 million as 600 million.
David,
What worries me is the slippery slope of funding our public ivies from tuition.
Once that happens, the incentive to take more high paying out of state students will be irresistible. For example, UC Berkeley now has an out of state tuition of $50,000. It seems inevitable to me that Berkeley will be pressured by its faculty and the legislature to go as private as possible.
That might not be bad thing if, in our state, the legislature decided that what WAstate needed was an elite private school .. a Northwest version of Harvard/MIT, Oxford, or Stanford. Perhaps our local bazillionaires seeking to outdo the Gates’ Foundation as a personal legacy might want to buy a world class university?
A largely privatized Allan University or perhaps Universite de Amazon, could serve many of the same seed functions for industry that the UW does now.
Of course, our model would have to be Stanford, rather than UPenn, we would want to stay in the PAC 10! Imagine, Paul Allen could even buy us a new stadium the way he bought one for the Seahawks!
Of course Allen U would have a much smaller, Ivy-like class size, other than for football). But, like football, we could then recruit the best students from wherever they might come .. India, China, Qatar???
Somehow, I find this image hard to accept in this remote haven of Scandinavian sensibility. Moreover, to achieve this we would REALLY need to change the way we treat K-12 as well.
In a WA state dominated intellectually by Allan U, how would we be sure that our public schools were able to produce Washington kids able to get into Allan? Or. perhaps, would AU become the school of choice for Lakeside and Bush?
Another great post, Goldy.
I’m not sure I’m sold on the high tuition/high finical aid model as it would be far too easy for it to be turned into just a high cost model. We’re seeing too many folks that want to go back to the good old of days where the price of tuition helped keep upward social and economic mobility down and keep “the trash down where they belong.” call We need those guarantees.
This reminds me of the governors plan for the state parks. She want to take them out the general fund and set up their own source of funding for them. This is a good idea for many reasons, not the least of which being that the governor and state ledge have more than proven that they can’t be trusted to care for them properly. But, the plan the governor put forward is unworkable and doesn’t contain anywhere near the kind of funding that our state parks need.
So… I’m left wondering if the thing to do is to do as little as possible this year and make a big push for new people and new plans in 2012.
NIS and NITs aside
Yep, I misfigured the pop of the US. Fault of a Harvard education.
As for “ivies” the term is widely used to refer to elite private schools in the US whether they do or do not play football with Yale.
Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, as well as Duke are often considered as “ivies.”
I am, however, fairly certain that MIT is not a land grant school. MIT began as a tech academy in Boston. Harvard, on the other hand, doe have a residual Commonwealth of Mass school status.
@3
I think Puddy, is a Cornell alum, which makes me wonder about the quality of education there!
SJ @7:
Your fair certainty is incorrect. Thomas L. Magnanti, then Dean of the MIT School of Engineering, wrote in the school’s April 2007 e-newsletter (emphasis added):
You might also want to refer to the membership list of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. They show that the MA legislature has designated two land grant institutions — the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. New York’s only state-designated land grant school is Cornell University. And of course Washington’s land grant institution is WSU.
@7
Re: ‘ivies’ designation.
When I attended Tufts, the only school that looks down on Harvard*, we considered ourselves, along with schools like Amherst, Williams, Bodoin and the like, the ‘Poison Ivy League’, a hipper, edgier version of the staid ‘Ivies’
*as SJ and any other Harvarians will know, Tufts sits on a high hill in Somerville, and with the right piece of field artillery could lay waste to our neighbors in Cambridge.
Addendum to @9 — the link I gave @3 goes directly to the APLU membership roster.
@10
Don’t worry, the ivies are all looked down at by Oxford and the real Cambridge.
SJ @7,
Nobody in the Ivies considers non-Ivy schools to be Ivy. You sure you went to Harvard?
Yes,
I do realize you had to go to a state school, but U Penn is a GOOD state school .
Actually, as far as the Harvard community is concerned, the “Ivy” concept means very little. Harvard’s rivals are MIT, Oxford, Cambridge,Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Penn and then, to a varying extent, Columbia, Chicago, Duke, Cal Tech ???
Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth are, realistically, not in the same league. Actually, at the College level, Haverford, Reed, Amherst, and some others are also pretty much in the same rarified atmosphere.
If you look at various rankings, you will see that the public ivies .. Berkeley, Wisconsin, Michigan, UW, UNC, are about in the same rank, just below Harvard etc.
@9 NIS
I stand corrected.
I will, henceforth, tease my Techie friends about their having gone to an ag school .
@12 Oxbridge and Camford ..
These are the ONLY non US schools in the current top rankings of world schools.
Like the ivies (private and public) Oxford and Cambridge are world schools .. with faculty drawn not from the world.
What maes the oubkuc ivies so unique is that LOCAL students get to attend world class schools.
@14 U Penn is not a state school. Penn State is, but the University of Pennsylvania is not and never has been. Cornell is an hermaphrodite, part state school part private.
This entire system is predicated on the assumption that families are able and willing to pay the expected contribution as determined by a government formula. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. There are lots of students out there whose parents simply have not saved or have existing financial obligations or who simply have no desire to pay for their child’s higher education.
Reasonably priced public universities allow those students to afford a respectable degree through part time work and student loans without potentially derailing their eduction by becoming independent for financial aid purposes through joining the military, marrying or waiting until age 24 to attend college.
High tuition/high aid model would require that there is enough financial aid to cover the difference. Endowments have taken a hit, although I suppose they are doing better in the stock market these days.
Even some of the institutions that have historically had healthy endowments have not escaped the scourge of the economy.
And when sources for financial aid become scarce, the criteria for qualification changes. Most public institutions base most of the financial aid on need rather than merit. Institutions that can afford it, consider admission into their institution evidence of merit. However, as soon as the aid becomes more scarce, the criteria for receiving it changes. That ultimately limits who gets the aid and then sets up a different system of have and have nots.
Every institution specializes in the type of education it offers. Every institution should have something unique to offer its students, and in particular its undergraduate students. Rankings of research universities often come not from what it offers to undergraduates, but rather who is part of the faculty, how much research they do, what sorts of money they bring in and most likely what is going on in the doctoral programs in specific fields.
There is some…trickle down effect…for undergraduate students if you get the star TA who works for the star professor who never darkens the door of a classroom.
SJ, looking down his nose @14:
Depends on what sort of league you’re talking about. If you’re an undergraduate student, you’re vastly more likely to be taught by, interact with, and even socialize with, senior faculty at Dartmouth (and Brown, I believe) than at Harvard or Yale. Yes, the top scholars in Cambridge and New Haven really are the best of the best, but Joe Soph and Jane Junior will never see them. Hell, they’ll be lucky to cross paths with their grad students.
In my very first programming class, I learned BASIC from John Kemeny. You know, the guy who invented it.
perhaps our college professors like sj and darryl should accept a pay cut in order for tuition to remain affordable.
think they will go for that? nah, I didnt think so either….
The one question I’ve always had with regard to the “high tuition, high FA” models I’ve seen proposed is just how exactly does the system propose to identify who gets FA?
Take our own state’s current system of “in-state” and “out of state” tuition. We charge full tuition for non-residents. That is to say, we include in the bill the portion that is otherwise paid by the taxpayer. But establishing residency is relatively cheap and easy for most students. And the admissions offices find policing these kinds of things tedious and usually pointless. Some kid who has lived his or her whole life in Idaho simply pretends to have been living with a relative in Spokane, maybe even going so far as to move in with them for a brief time, and – voila! – resident tuition.
Once a sizable enough proportion of high income parents and their kids begin to engage in scamming the system, the demands on the “high FA” side would begin to overburden it. Part of such a system would have to include a fairly robust method of verifying financial need.
In CA you had to establish residency for a year before you could request the in-state tuition and the school could still refuse if they thought you had no intention of staying in the state. Your high school transcripts will tell them where you’ve been.
I think people need to seriously think about how kids approach college. I think jumping from high school to college right after senior summer is not the best idea for many many students.
whats wrong with working for 2-3 years, living with mom and dad(and saving up the money you earned working), and then hitting college when your 21 and can fund much of the cost.
Its been proven TIME AND TIME AGAIN, that college students are more likely to succeed with good grades and graduating when ITS THEIR MONEY ON THE LINE, and they have some skin in the game.
I cant tell you how many people I saw fuck off in school, party all the time, get shitty grades and eventually drop out when they didnt have to foot any of the bill(either because mom and dad paid for it or because of grants and student aid took care of the bill – or a majority of it).
I have saved and can afford to foot college bill for my kids, but they arent getting it for free. They gotta pay their way through part of each quarter, and if the grades are good, then I will reimburse them whatever cost they kicked in.
Why is it that liberals are so opposed to people putting some of their own skin the game?
You wanna go to college? work for a few years, save up some money, and mature a little bit first, THEN ask your fellow taxpayer for help.
and here is another idea:
get rid of freshman and sophomore years at the major 4 year school(like UW). WHAT A WASTE OF FUCKING MONEY THAT IS.
Go to a CC and blow through the 100 and 200 level classes there for a fraction of the cost, then transfer with the AA and its smooth sailing.
Freshman and Sophomore years at large school = possibly the dumbest idea on earth.
keeping it realz…………
B-b-but this is SO-SHUL-ISM, taking from the rich and giving to the poor!!! Yer spose to take from the poor and give to the rich!!!
@25 I think you like community colleges because you couldn’t get into a real college.
Cornell has 41 Nobel Laureates and 28 Rhodes Scholars.
Harvard has 75 Nobel Laureates.
Dartmouth has 3 Nobel Laureates.
Brown has 7 Nobel Laureates.
Yale has 49 Nobel Laureates.
University of Pennsylvania has 26 Nobel Laureates.
MIT has 76 Nobel Laureates.
Columbia 79 Nobel Laureates.
Princeton has ??? Laureates. Puddy didn’t find any.
And for SJ and his uppity response above… from WikiPedia on Cornell…
Your favorite commentators Keith Odormann & Bill Maher went to Cornell Michael.
@21 Why is it that conservatives’ solution to everything is making working people take pay cuts? How about making capitalists take a pay cut? You know, the people who make $100 million a year trading oil futures?
@22 “Once a sizable enough proportion of high income parents and their kids begin to engage in scamming the system”
Good point. You don’t become “high income” in this country by being honest. Scamming and high incomes go hand-in-hand as every Republican knows.
So Roger Dumb Rabbit wants a whole bunch of liberals to take a pay cut?
Sounds like a plan Roger!
@24 “Why is it that liberals are so opposed to people putting some of their own skin the game?”
Why is it you assume we are? You’re good at stereotyping people but not much else.
I would guess that “liberals” tend to come from less affluent families and are more likely to bootstrap their own educations, whereas the fuck-off frat-boy types who have everything greased for them are your Republican types.
@31 You got a problem with George Soros taking a pay cut?
Roger, can you “read”?
Puddy wrote – Sounds like a plan Roger!
@27
Arent you dead yet? do the taxpayers a favor already and get it the fuck overwith.
And I graduated from a 4 year school, tyvm.
@32
poor Goebbels Rabbit, stuck in his imaginary world of assumptions and stereotypes.
when are you writing the state a bonus check?
ya, thats what I thought.
Not what the HA faithful liberals have blogged Roger Dumb Rabbit. Libs come from more affluent families per your buds. It’s okay Roger, we know the memory is going!
#37
nice catch…
My Personal Experience:
1994
UW Tuition/fees: 1yr = $2800
Full-time, food service 12-week-summer’s pay before frosh yr (not hard to find, I did it): $2300
Pay as %Tuition = 82%
2011
UW Tuition/fees: 1yr = $8700
part-time, food service 12-week-summer’s pay before frosh yr (probably hard/very hard to find, I suspect for an 18-yr old….$9.5/hr, 33 hrs/week): $3200
Pay as %Tuition = 37%
Puddy,
Cornell is fine. It just is not in the same rank level as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Berkeley and Stanford.
I even know some modestly intelligent people who went there, of course they could not get into a more prestigious school but would certainly not be an excuse for my condescending to them or for their demonstrating a pervasive inability to deal with fact or respond to intellectual challenges.
FWIW, I do not donate to Harvard. While I feel I owe most of my life to that place, I fee the pubic ivies do a better job of serving our country’s best students.
Of course, at least one Cornell grad I know was so successful that her kids both went to the UW. Her success offers us all hope!
$55,000 to attend University of Pennsylvania for one year? Back in the 1970’s, it was less than $10,000 for tuition, room, board and everything, even for places like Penn and Harvard.
What is this world coming to? Is Goldy lucky enough to make that much in a year? Most people in America make less than that a year. And to think that some families make a quarter million a year, and can afford to pay that much a year without any loans and grants?
@41 And to think that families in Washington who make $400,000 a year pay less than 3% of their income in local/state taxes while those earning under $20,000 a year pay over 17% …
And to think our stupid electorate, by a 2-to-1 margin, voted against making those high earners pay a little more so we don’t have to dismantle quite as many public services …
@37 My mistake, putz. All my Democratic buddies are driving Lexuses and Mercedes while the poor struggling Republicans commute on Metro buses and in Ford Focuses. How could I have overlooked that.
Let me make something real clear here. I grew up in a community that was approximately 98% Republican. In high school, I was a Goldwater conservative because all my friends were. That’s all there was in my town, rightwing conservatives.
Then I went away to college, and within one year, turned into a Democrat and have remained a Democrat ever since.
Yeah, it must have been all those rich liberal kids in the frat houses partying on their parents’ money who turned me into a Democrat.
Yeah sure …
You know putz is desperate for an argument when he claims liberals have all the wealth in this country.
Next thing you know putz will be lobbying for relief legislation for billionaires. Oh wait, they already did that, it was called TARP …