LOL. I had to drop out of (MIT, not BU, but w/e) due to not being able to get financial aid (even though I think it was technically during the "we will give you as much financial aid as you need to attend" era), due to parents having income marginally higher than some federal cutoffs but unwilling to provide documentation or loans. Ultimately worked out fine, but I'm pretty unsympathetic to the "soak people for $82k/yr and then offer some discounts" price discrimination lie.
Similarly, I didn't attend some schools I was accepted to because the debt would have crushed me.
That's why I don't get the big push for canceling student loans. It feels like rewarding people for irresponsible behavior, and ultimately punishing those who acted responsibly.
Further, I expect it would drive tuitions even higher. Who cares what it costs if you don't have to pay...
So many people are screwed by cutoffs and rules. My parents had assets on paper but were going through a messy divorce and bleeding cash; they refused to give me anything at the time I was in need of tuition money. I got two jobs, but that didn't cover it. Many, many visits were made to the financial aid and advising offices -- every time the answer was the same. The only way out of the requirements is to prove you're fully alienated from your parents, and that's really hard to prove.
But if you turn 24, poof, you magically no longer have parents and can get any loans / aid / whatever based on your own income.
I get why the rules exist but still kind of feel like I got scammed, just due to the endless brainwashing kids get that you must graduate from college at any cost. (I ended up taking some 20%+ interest rate loans.)
Damn, yeah I took a full ride instead of paying the 70k back when I was deciding for college…agree would feel a bit miffed if everyone suddenly was forgiven all debt
This is somewhat misleading as the initial part of their page says `BU meets 100% of demonstrated financial need for all admitted, first-year students who are US citizens or permanent residents.` — BU is part of a small number (in the dozens maybe) of private US colleges/universities that are "need blind", which can basically be thought of as "price discrimination" from microeconomics. Wealthier families would pay full price, while less-advantaged students pay a more reasonable amount of money. At these schools the total out of pocket cost ends up being roughly comparable (if not less) than going to a state university would be. I went to a similar school and the out of pocket cost was far less than going to my state university as an in-state student would have been, and I got a much better education.
Obviously $80k is still an obscene amount of money, but I don't really have an issue with kids of millionaires + billionaires having to pay that much to attend.
I think that what this means in the long-run is that this small number of very highly resourced private colleges (Ivies, a lot of the small New England liberal arts schools, Duke, MIT, etc.) will be able to sustain "normal" people going there on the need-blind aid, and lower-ranked private institutions (out of the top 50-100 schools) will probably close if they can't afford to offer that level of aid.
This is beholden to BU's definition of need. Barring any transparency on what these definitions actually mean for the school, I'd assume it means the following.
1 - Students should pay the maximum that they and their family are able to, inclusive of student loans. If their parents have collateral in any form including home equity or retirement accounts, it should be assumed that this collateral can be used to secure loans or pay for the school.
AND/OR
2 - BU gives preferential admissions to students who are able to pay the maximum, while telling everyone else that they don't. This can be done through multiple methods including A) offer admission but don't offer significant aid, B) offer admission preferentially based on signs of high income including expensive club participation, high cost achievements, or Geographic considerations.
Schools have become adept at pretending to do something about the student loan crises, I don't see why we should take any non-quantified statement at face value. My Alma mater UMass Amherst, used to lead every tuition and fee increase with a statement on increased financial aid - Unfortunately a simple multiplication would always show that the magnitude of cost increase vastly outstripped the magnitude of the aid increase.
Can someone explain to me how any schools are in danger of going out of business? Their expenses aren't going up, they're not paying professors more, they're not leveraging themselves into debt. What are the huge cost increases they're bearing that force them to raise tuition?
The one institute I'm familiar with appears to have hired an absolute shitload of useless administrators, but that is an expense of choice that could be trimmed at any time.
Unbankruptable student loans should have a hard cap proportional to the median expected earnings for a given major.
I know that the purpose of college degree isn't just to make a lot of money, but if you can't make a lot of money, you shouldn't be able to take out 100k+ in loans that's legally protected from being removed in bankruptcy.
Of course, the real solution here should just be free public college + clampdowns on cost overruns so that it's practical to fund. Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators and whichever sports lose money. We used to have cheap college, and it's possible to get back there. Find what changed over the decades and cut back.
I actually think the real solution is that student loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. I think it is a much better, easier and fairer fix than just cancelling some student loans.
Since student loans aren't dischargeable, it means that lenders have no incentive to do any due diligence. On the contrary, their incentive is to load students up with as much debt as possible.
Yes, making student loans dischargeable would mean fewer students would get loans, but that's the point. Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.
> Of course, the real solution here should just be free public college + clampdowns on cost overruns so that it's practical to fund. Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators and whichever sports lose money. We used to have cheap college, and it's possible to get back there. Find what changed over the decades and cut back.
Agree in theory, but then we should really be sure that the "clampdowns on cost overruns" will be effective before giving the government carte blanche to spend our tax money on this. The government is not even able to build rail without huge cost overruns and delays. I don't trust it to run universities.
We will go back to cheap college when that is what students and their families choose cheap schools over expensive ones. Hint: They don’t. They won’t.
Community colleges have seen the largest enrollment drops, followed by public 4 year. Private colleges that lower their tuition, counterintuitively, almost always see a drop in applicants the following year.
> Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators
This is a fantasy. Whatever feedback mechanisms existed in our society in the past to keep things from getting out of hand, are gone---whether in academia, medicine, or any part of government.
How about hard caps on who get's admitted to any school that accepts government aid.
Reserve 1/2 of the spots to kids from low income families if they can get in, and charge 1/8 of what they charge kids from wealthy families.
If the school has the nerve to charge a wealthy kid $100,000/yr. fine.
The poor kid is charged $20,000. (Financial aid is guaranteed, and automatically discharged in upon graduation. If they don't graduate they will have to pay it back.)
The wealthy parents might be questioning the luxury dorms, luxury amenities, at these fancy colleges, along with the high paid teachers whom don't even teach, but do research.
The administrators would have to figure out how to keep costs down, because the wealthy parents will only pay so much for Biff's, or Becky's, education.
The very small percentage of kids whom daddies don't pay for everything up to 30 years of age will be honestly Means Tested to be included with the lower price poor kids pay.
For those who aren't familiar, BU was pretty well known (at least a couple decades ago) for being a "rich kids" school. That is, it had a reputation as a quality school, but tuition was always high there (considerably higher than what you'd pay at an Ivy) and so it seemed to attract wealthy kids. I'd put other colleges like USC in LA or Emory University in Atlanta as having similar reputations: good (but not great) private universities with sky high tuitions.
Just pointing this out because the fact that one US university has super high base tuition rates (before any financial aid) doesn't mean it's necessarily representative of much more.
Yup I have a relative who attended BU, and I remember hearing stories of some insanely rich kids from overseas. Like children of Russian oligarchs and the Saudi royal family levels of wealthy. I have no problem if they want to spend $80k/yr to educate their kids in Boston.
The solution is and always has been to cut the fluff from the academies. For context, go add up the salaries the 'student services' area of the expensive school of your choice.
Having worked for one such office for ~15 years, the most appalling part was that they are largely antagonistic toward the faculty and mission of the schools. The waste is dizzying.
> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
> First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
> Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
> The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
A decade or so ago most families paid full price at most colleges/universities in the US. That is not the case today.
You see a lot of opinion pieces talking about how high tuition prices are at colleges and how the pricing is out of control, but what isn't talked about is that most of these schools are now discounting their tuition increasingly every year. Typically it is on a sliding scale based on need. For some of the Ivy league schools tuition is free if you are anything below upper middle income. Universities do this by pulling a small percentage from their endowments each year (think of a retiree pulling 2% of investments each year while still growing the retirement nest egg by 4%). That is exactly what colleges are doing.
Bigger endowments = bigger discount rate = better quality of students attending = better (hopefully) students = better reputation. At least that is how the thinking goes.
Google "Boston University." On the right of it will tell you the tuition and average cost of attendance, including cost by income bracket.
If professors are making 250K / year, and the average course load per student is 4 courses, the class size is twenty, and each professor teaches two class sections per semester, student tuition would be $25K.
Professors make much less, course sizes are much larger, and tuition is at least double my estimate.
My conclusion? Professors with teaching positions should unionize or just found separate, low overhead universities that are optimized to provide higher education.
Students aren't going to BU for the professors and the administration knows that. Most are just their to get the piece of paper from a prestigious institution.
Personal example, I almost did an MD/PhD at BU. Almost every MD/PhD is fully-funded due to the time commitment and presumed loss of 4-5 years of attending-level salary. BU's MD/PhD program is not fully funded...you have to pay for your living expenses all throughout the MD years, not an easy price to stomach in Boston (see: https://www.bumc.bu.edu/mdphd/admissions/funding/).
As I look back on ugrad school, I conclude "Don't pay a lot for ugrad school." I can think of maybe three exceptions -- Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, and not for the education but for who you meet.
For the education, basically DIY -- do it yourself. Blunt truth: For a really good education, 'bout have to DIY anyway.
How to do that? Mostly books. Now supplemented with the Internet. Maybe some help from a few profs.
For the books, etc. find what looks like the best courses in all of the US and use those to build your own reading list. For a good education, need to do that anyway: Blunt truth, ugrad school is a busy time and won't get as much as you want. So, will leave with a diploma but also with a nice collection of materials have not carefully studied yet.
Another blunt fact: Say, 3 courses each semester, two semesters per year, 4 years -- 24 courses. If you have as many as 4 of those really good, you are lucky. Usually the teaching really isn't very good, guys.
Another blunt fact: ASAP, already by 8th grade, via parents, uncles, friends, whatever, try to get into, connected with, know about what is going on outside high school and college and relevant to your career options and, thus, also relevant to what you study in college. If a college can help get you connected with some promising real career directions, great, but don't count on it.
Blunt fact: You have a good shot at getting about the best ugrad education possible by doing a lot of DIY, making your own investigations and connections, and going to a rather cheap state university and living cheap at home.
The Internet has a lot of video clips of lectures in courses from famous universities, profs, etc. These clips expose the truth: There is a lot of poor teaching out there, and really good material is rare.
In short, the person best to manage, direct, design your ugrad education is you. Don't just passively lean back and take what is given -- instead as here, be active, DIY, etc.
This is all spot on from my experience, and possibly summarized by Will Huntings quote “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”
Also many of the top companies (Tesla, Google, etc.) no longer require degrees to apply and get hired
As others have pointed out, and as a few media outlets have increasingly covered, there's a big difference between sticker price and net price. A minority of students at private universities pay full sticker price, and if I had to guess, I'd say most are wealthy foreign students (who are effectively subsidizing domestic students' education).
Colleges—as well as sites like US News—should figure out a way to more effectively communicate average cost, or a typical cost range, after non-loan student aid.
Student loans are another issue entirely. I agree with other commenters that universal student loan forgiveness isn't a long term solution to the student debt problem, and I think we should focus on expanding and simplifying programs like PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness). That said, I don't find the rational-choice argument ("I ran the numbers and determined X, and did Y") persuasive. Few 18-year-olds have an expansive enough understanding of the world to accurately assess student loan burden against potential future earnings.
Finally, we forgive and renegotiate all kinds of debt all the time. Why can't we do the same for student loans? Why are student loan interest rates set a decade in advance by Congress? The system makes no sense.
Other countries make government funding of universities and government funding of student loans for those same institutions conditional on price controls.
What’s wrong with saying the US government gives no research money, no funding dollars and no student loans to students attending Harvard unless Harvard agrees to keep tuitions below a certain number?
There are lots of European universities with great English bachelor programs.
My university, Eindhoven University of Technology, has a bachelor program for €11,600 a year. You have to be on time with signup and be lucky with the lottery (also check out Delft and other EU universities). A room would be around 500 to 700 euro's per month.
BU is an undergraduate diploma mill; always has been. Back in the 80's and 90's Silber (who was basically a late 1900's puritan) cared more with keeping students from fucking each other in the dorms than he did the curriculum.
Around a decade ago I dated someone who worked as an assistant professor and she was told in no uncertain terms to give passing grades to the NCAA hockey players taking her class. None of them had attended a single lecture or turned in a single assignment.
These days BU is where ultra-wealthy Chinese send their kids who aren't smart enough to for Harvard or MIT. You can spot them a mile away in wintertime if they're out walking; every single one of them owns a $1000 Canada Goose parka. You won't find them on public transit, because they're driving top-end luxury/hyper cars.
Spot on with the foreign money thing... I live downtown and they're all living in the new Theater District and North Station buildings.
I've got some friends in one of the newer condo buildings downtown and they have been really annoyed by how much the building is like a dorm. Foreign money buys up million dollar units and lets their kids stay in them while they are in school. Kids in turn throw noisy parties and do generally stupid 18-21 year old crap that pisses off the regular residents.
The Department of Education's College Scorecard for BU[1] suggests relatively few given the reported $30,395 average annual cost figure, which is described as:
> The average annual net price that a student who receives federal financial aid pays to cover expenses (e.g., tuition, living expenses) to attend a school. Net price is the school's cost of attendance minus any grants and scholarships received. For public schools, this is only the average cost for in-state students.
In comparison, Stanford's reported average annual cost[2] is $12,894. This makes sense given its student responsibility[3].
Or another option that I've heard of in several states is to do two years at community college, and then transfer to a state college. Some of the benefits of these programs are that acceptance to a state college is guaranteed provided the student maintains a certain GPA, and there are also some pretty generous financial aid benefits. [1]
I think this is something that should be encouraged much more often for students graduating from high school - especially for kids who don't really know what they want to do yet. Maybe take a year or two off, experience the real world and grow up a bit, and then do an associate's degree followed by a bachelor's degree. Or else maybe learn a trade. Or join the military.
I've known a lot of people who took big loans and went straight into college after high school, and ended up dropping out. Maybe they weren't ready yet, or maybe college just wasn't right for them. And the costs - both financial and developmental - can be pretty devastating.
[+] [-] rdl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silisili|3 years ago|reply
That's why I don't get the big push for canceling student loans. It feels like rewarding people for irresponsible behavior, and ultimately punishing those who acted responsibly.
Further, I expect it would drive tuitions even higher. Who cares what it costs if you don't have to pay...
[+] [-] telchior|3 years ago|reply
But if you turn 24, poof, you magically no longer have parents and can get any loans / aid / whatever based on your own income.
I get why the rules exist but still kind of feel like I got scammed, just due to the endless brainwashing kids get that you must graduate from college at any cost. (I ended up taking some 20%+ interest rate loans.)
[+] [-] catilinam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LigmaYC|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwelson|3 years ago|reply
Obviously $80k is still an obscene amount of money, but I don't really have an issue with kids of millionaires + billionaires having to pay that much to attend.
I think that what this means in the long-run is that this small number of very highly resourced private colleges (Ivies, a lot of the small New England liberal arts schools, Duke, MIT, etc.) will be able to sustain "normal" people going there on the need-blind aid, and lower-ranked private institutions (out of the top 50-100 schools) will probably close if they can't afford to offer that level of aid.
[+] [-] lumost|3 years ago|reply
1 - Students should pay the maximum that they and their family are able to, inclusive of student loans. If their parents have collateral in any form including home equity or retirement accounts, it should be assumed that this collateral can be used to secure loans or pay for the school.
AND/OR
2 - BU gives preferential admissions to students who are able to pay the maximum, while telling everyone else that they don't. This can be done through multiple methods including A) offer admission but don't offer significant aid, B) offer admission preferentially based on signs of high income including expensive club participation, high cost achievements, or Geographic considerations.
Schools have become adept at pretending to do something about the student loan crises, I don't see why we should take any non-quantified statement at face value. My Alma mater UMass Amherst, used to lead every tuition and fee increase with a statement on increased financial aid - Unfortunately a simple multiplication would always show that the magnitude of cost increase vastly outstripped the magnitude of the aid increase.
[+] [-] rdw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|3 years ago|reply
I know that the purpose of college degree isn't just to make a lot of money, but if you can't make a lot of money, you shouldn't be able to take out 100k+ in loans that's legally protected from being removed in bankruptcy.
Of course, the real solution here should just be free public college + clampdowns on cost overruns so that it's practical to fund. Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators and whichever sports lose money. We used to have cheap college, and it's possible to get back there. Find what changed over the decades and cut back.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
Since student loans aren't dischargeable, it means that lenders have no incentive to do any due diligence. On the contrary, their incentive is to load students up with as much debt as possible.
Yes, making student loans dischargeable would mean fewer students would get loans, but that's the point. Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.
[+] [-] yes_really|3 years ago|reply
Agree in theory, but then we should really be sure that the "clampdowns on cost overruns" will be effective before giving the government carte blanche to spend our tax money on this. The government is not even able to build rail without huge cost overruns and delays. I don't trust it to run universities.
[+] [-] etempleton|3 years ago|reply
Community colleges have seen the largest enrollment drops, followed by public 4 year. Private colleges that lower their tuition, counterintuitively, almost always see a drop in applicants the following year.
[+] [-] javert|3 years ago|reply
This is a fantasy. Whatever feedback mechanisms existed in our society in the past to keep things from getting out of hand, are gone---whether in academia, medicine, or any part of government.
[+] [-] User23|3 years ago|reply
Ought not to exist. Full stop.
[+] [-] donthellbanme|3 years ago|reply
Reserve 1/2 of the spots to kids from low income families if they can get in, and charge 1/8 of what they charge kids from wealthy families.
If the school has the nerve to charge a wealthy kid $100,000/yr. fine.
The poor kid is charged $20,000. (Financial aid is guaranteed, and automatically discharged in upon graduation. If they don't graduate they will have to pay it back.)
The wealthy parents might be questioning the luxury dorms, luxury amenities, at these fancy colleges, along with the high paid teachers whom don't even teach, but do research.
The administrators would have to figure out how to keep costs down, because the wealthy parents will only pay so much for Biff's, or Becky's, education.
The very small percentage of kids whom daddies don't pay for everything up to 30 years of age will be honestly Means Tested to be included with the lower price poor kids pay.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago|reply
Just pointing this out because the fact that one US university has super high base tuition rates (before any financial aid) doesn't mean it's necessarily representative of much more.
[+] [-] freetime2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Agamus|3 years ago|reply
Having worked for one such office for ~15 years, the most appalling part was that they are largely antagonistic toward the faculty and mission of the schools. The waste is dizzying.
[+] [-] monissiddiqui|3 years ago|reply
> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
> First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
> Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
> The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
[+] [-] pishpash|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daxaxelrod|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-thompson|3 years ago|reply
> Probably less than you think.
> ...
> Total Cost of Attendance $82,760
How in the world can someone write this copy with a straight face?
[+] [-] etempleton|3 years ago|reply
You see a lot of opinion pieces talking about how high tuition prices are at colleges and how the pricing is out of control, but what isn't talked about is that most of these schools are now discounting their tuition increasingly every year. Typically it is on a sliding scale based on need. For some of the Ivy league schools tuition is free if you are anything below upper middle income. Universities do this by pulling a small percentage from their endowments each year (think of a retiree pulling 2% of investments each year while still growing the retirement nest egg by 4%). That is exactly what colleges are doing.
Bigger endowments = bigger discount rate = better quality of students attending = better (hopefully) students = better reputation. At least that is how the thinking goes.
Google "Boston University." On the right of it will tell you the tuition and average cost of attendance, including cost by income bracket.
Cost Before Aid: $77,662 After Aid:$30,259
[+] [-] rottencupcakes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x-shadowban|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|3 years ago|reply
If professors are making 250K / year, and the average course load per student is 4 courses, the class size is twenty, and each professor teaches two class sections per semester, student tuition would be $25K.
Professors make much less, course sizes are much larger, and tuition is at least double my estimate.
My conclusion? Professors with teaching positions should unionize or just found separate, low overhead universities that are optimized to provide higher education.
[+] [-] queuebert|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinmhayes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aabajian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graycat|3 years ago|reply
For the education, basically DIY -- do it yourself. Blunt truth: For a really good education, 'bout have to DIY anyway.
How to do that? Mostly books. Now supplemented with the Internet. Maybe some help from a few profs.
For the books, etc. find what looks like the best courses in all of the US and use those to build your own reading list. For a good education, need to do that anyway: Blunt truth, ugrad school is a busy time and won't get as much as you want. So, will leave with a diploma but also with a nice collection of materials have not carefully studied yet.
Another blunt fact: Say, 3 courses each semester, two semesters per year, 4 years -- 24 courses. If you have as many as 4 of those really good, you are lucky. Usually the teaching really isn't very good, guys.
Another blunt fact: ASAP, already by 8th grade, via parents, uncles, friends, whatever, try to get into, connected with, know about what is going on outside high school and college and relevant to your career options and, thus, also relevant to what you study in college. If a college can help get you connected with some promising real career directions, great, but don't count on it.
Blunt fact: You have a good shot at getting about the best ugrad education possible by doing a lot of DIY, making your own investigations and connections, and going to a rather cheap state university and living cheap at home.
The Internet has a lot of video clips of lectures in courses from famous universities, profs, etc. These clips expose the truth: There is a lot of poor teaching out there, and really good material is rare.
In short, the person best to manage, direct, design your ugrad education is you. Don't just passively lean back and take what is given -- instead as here, be active, DIY, etc.
[+] [-] imranq|3 years ago|reply
Also many of the top companies (Tesla, Google, etc.) no longer require degrees to apply and get hired
[+] [-] aantix|3 years ago|reply
>"Probably less than you think."
No, it was not less than I thought, BU..
[+] [-] JoeJonathan|3 years ago|reply
Colleges—as well as sites like US News—should figure out a way to more effectively communicate average cost, or a typical cost range, after non-loan student aid.
Student loans are another issue entirely. I agree with other commenters that universal student loan forgiveness isn't a long term solution to the student debt problem, and I think we should focus on expanding and simplifying programs like PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness). That said, I don't find the rational-choice argument ("I ran the numbers and determined X, and did Y") persuasive. Few 18-year-olds have an expansive enough understanding of the world to accurately assess student loan burden against potential future earnings.
Finally, we forgive and renegotiate all kinds of debt all the time. Why can't we do the same for student loans? Why are student loan interest rates set a decade in advance by Congress? The system makes no sense.
[+] [-] bluedays|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VintageCool|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wging|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alberth|3 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21442807
[+] [-] TimPC|3 years ago|reply
What’s wrong with saying the US government gives no research money, no funding dollars and no student loans to students attending Harvard unless Harvard agrees to keep tuitions below a certain number?
[+] [-] whazor|3 years ago|reply
My university, Eindhoven University of Technology, has a bachelor program for €11,600 a year. You have to be on time with signup and be lucky with the lottery (also check out Delft and other EU universities). A room would be around 500 to 700 euro's per month.
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|3 years ago|reply
Around a decade ago I dated someone who worked as an assistant professor and she was told in no uncertain terms to give passing grades to the NCAA hockey players taking her class. None of them had attended a single lecture or turned in a single assignment.
These days BU is where ultra-wealthy Chinese send their kids who aren't smart enough to for Harvard or MIT. You can spot them a mile away in wintertime if they're out walking; every single one of them owns a $1000 Canada Goose parka. You won't find them on public transit, because they're driving top-end luxury/hyper cars.
[+] [-] voidfunc|3 years ago|reply
I've got some friends in one of the newer condo buildings downtown and they have been really annoyed by how much the building is like a dorm. Foreign money buys up million dollar units and lets their kids stay in them while they are in school. Kids in turn throw noisy parties and do generally stupid 18-21 year old crap that pisses off the regular residents.
[+] [-] jacobrussell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|3 years ago|reply
With financial aid, this is probably more along the lines of "tell us how much you make and we'll tell you the price."
[+] [-] metaphor|3 years ago|reply
> The average annual net price that a student who receives federal financial aid pays to cover expenses (e.g., tuition, living expenses) to attend a school. Net price is the school's cost of attendance minus any grants and scholarships received. For public schools, this is only the average cost for in-state students.
In comparison, Stanford's reported average annual cost[2] is $12,894. This makes sense given its student responsibility[3].
[1] https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?164988-Boston-Univer...
[2] https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?243744-Stanford-Univ...
[3] https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html
[+] [-] LanceH|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grokify|3 years ago|reply
I received a full tuition scholarship to BU.
[+] [-] jb3689|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freetime2|3 years ago|reply
I think this is something that should be encouraged much more often for students graduating from high school - especially for kids who don't really know what they want to do yet. Maybe take a year or two off, experience the real world and grow up a bit, and then do an associate's degree followed by a bachelor's degree. Or else maybe learn a trade. Or join the military.
I've known a lot of people who took big loans and went straight into college after high school, and ended up dropping out. Maybe they weren't ready yet, or maybe college just wasn't right for them. And the costs - both financial and developmental - can be pretty devastating.
[1] https://www.mass.edu/masstransfer/macomcom/home.asp