UM Free Tuition for In-State Kids Whose Families Make Less Than $65K
What a great opportunity for in-state kids!
Most kids across all income levels cant get into the Michigans of the world anymore. What are they to do?
Tuition vouchers at the most competitive schools do not level the playing field that is heavily skewed towards the financially advantaged from preschool ages.
Also we need more legitimate trade schools set up to train those who are not interested in traditional college programs.
I think it is or will be soon. I think Obama had a proposal to make all community colleges free. Can't remember exactly what happened with it but I thought it passed...
EDIT: guess it never got past proposal stage...bummer
Anyone have a link to a good article or paper on why tuition costs have risen so sharply? I have guesses but am largely uninformed
Combine:
Increased demand ("Everyone needs a college degree".)
+
Virtually unlimited ability to borrow money for college
and you have a price spiral without the usual constraints due to ability to pay.
Where's it go? Look at huge increases in non-instructional university staffing levels and massive physical plant expansions/modernizations/upgrades/lily-gilding.
For a more academic view on the tuition bubble, read some of what Prof. Mark J Perry of UM-Flint has written.
There have also been considerable cuts to state subsidies to public universities over the years:
Would be interested to see breakdown between tuition and room and board. When I was in A2 in the late 80's I had great need based scholarships that made it possible to attend UofM even though my parents couldn't pay nor could I.
The other thing I remember at the time was that Room and Board was not cheap so although this sounds good I'm not sure if this is marketing or really something different.
Free is good regardless but if it's only tuition it only cover 1/2 or 1/3 of the cost. Would be interested to see that breakdown.
You shouldn't view this is as something that negatively affects the middle class. Actually, this range encompasses some people in the lower middle class (which I am technically a part of as an individual). And I think anything that may help fight income inequality and help people climb out of poverty is ultimately a good thing for everybody.
(But, I'm not gonna argue that the middle class is getting screwed - its just not the lower class that's doing it)
MIddle class isn't getting screwed by this at all.
It's not justa $64k income. Your parents must also have less than 50k in assets. Meaning this is only effecting the very poor. The number of students that receive this a year won't be enormous.
Does it make it tougher to get into UM? Well, those kids still have to get in. If you argument is that this makes it tougher to get in, what your basically saying is that it is unfair for additional qualified applicants to be applying and potentially getting in.
My parents took out an equity loan to get myself and my sisters through college, but even in the early-mid 1990s, my tuition was about a third of what it is for students now. I think this is an incredible move by the university and an awesome opportunity for so many kids in the state of Michigan.
The rent is too damn high
The problem with this model is that the $65k (or whatever the gradient thresholds are) is more or less an arbitrary number. Sure, it may be based off of some calculation (e.g. multiple of the poverty line, median family income in Michigan, etc.), but there are going to be people who barely exceed the cutoff who are not demonstrably in a better financial position than those who are below the cutoff and receive the free tuition benefit (as some have already pointed out). This leads to bad incentives and may be deemed by some to be unfair.
The better model would be to cap the per student tuition at a percentage derived by using marginal income brackets similar to the methodology of our tax rate schedules. I believe that it would be the most fair given that the cap is progressive, and it wouldn't create a dranconian penalty to families for increasing its income over some arbitrary number. Sure, the income ranges themselves would be arbitrary numbers, but the extra tuition costs from jumping a bracket would be more paleatable.
Of course, this then would mean that the Umich would be functionally reducing tuition for many in-state students. Given the qualifiers attached to the current plan, I would be curious to see what percentage of in-state students Umich projects will qualify.
This is the university giving poorer qualified students a chance to attend Michigan they'd have never had. Poverty is cyclical and this is a great chance for over-achievers coming from tougher backgrounds than many of us an opportunity to break the cycle.
I don't live in Michigan so this doesn't apply to the kids I mentor, but all of them are high achievers. Great grades. Lots of extracurriculars. Involvement in community. Their only negative? They're first generation in their family to apply for college and all of them have great economic need. They come from a one parent household or their parents are non-English speakers with menial jobs. They are doing all the right things. They work harder than many of the more privileged kids in town because they have to. If they lived in Michigan, many would be exactly the kind of kid this would benefit. And it seems to me that's exactly what a multi billion dollar endowment is for.
i regret that i have only one neg to give for your comment. it isn't even internally consistent. in your post you're comparing the "achievers," who are rich parents of admitted students, with "non-achievers," who, since they're the ones getting subsidized, must be admitted students. too bad those 17 year olds haven't made enough money in their lives to afford college. everyone knows any achieving 17 year old would have a six figure bank account before enrolling in college.
This is amazing. My fiance currently goes to U of M (went back to school at 30 after initially not going to college) on a need based scholarship and we thought we were going to lose that scholarship when we got married. With me making $48k/year and her very little workig part time, that would be a big hit for us and make buying a house or starting a family tough...
This is really really amazing.
We need more of this in the world.
I hope it works out for you, truly, but "We need more of this in the world"?
Seems like a nice idea, free stuff for certain people, but this isn't coming from a huge donation by Johnny Moneybags. It simply shifts the burden of payment around. Profs aren't going to be working for free, the state and the feds aren't going to be give any more money to UM to fund this from what I've heard. So the other students and their families pay more so some can pay nothing.
It's not someone being altruistic. It's the U deciding to be redistributive with other people's money. If anyone should be lauded for this it should be the folks who have to pick up the tab.
and concentrated benefit. Unfortunate for the many folks who will pay more because of this and go further into debt in order to do so. Beneficiaries will obviously be clearly identifiable and extremely vocal.
Cool story bro.
Books, Room and board are also not covered under this plan. Many of Michigan's economically disadvantaged go to those schools to live at home and those campuses are generally more affordable.
Also in addition to being below the $65,000 annual income a family has to have less than $50,000 in total assets (retirement savings don't count). How assets are figured is a topic for a whole new thread. Love FAFSA!
There's been an interesting amount of protest here. Some of it I definitely get, especially from people who had to pay out of pocket or who are saddled with burdensome loans and are about to watch some people skate through free. And I'm not the biggest fan of the positions and philosophies of Big Education, which U of M is a real part of.
But Michigan is the best public university in the country, a top-25 university in the entire world, located in a state that has been in varying levels of decline for decades. In the 2010 census Michigan was the only state in the union to LOSE population. The auto industry is contracting and moving its factories to other states and countries. Nothing is coming in to replace it.
So this great university (by the standards of the world's education market) that is chartered by and for the state is kind of leaving its own constituents behind.
This doesn't fix everything, but it helps deal with that a bit. It makes the U of M accessible to a much wider swath of people.
And that's not just for the kids graduating from high school next year. It's a message to 12 and 14 and 16 year-old kids in Romulus and Benton Harbor and Cadillac and Ishpeming and Lansing and Detroit. The message: You can do this.
There are a lot of kids who grow up never believing that there's ever going to be anything better than working unskilled jobs, living in rental housing, and buying lottery tickets. This can give a few of them a vision for something better.
Seriously.. reading through this thread sheds a sad light.
The university is doing something to help lower income families get education that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get, or would otherwise cripple them financially for years, and people somehow turn that into a negative... without even knowing the facts, they assume others are going to pay more (from my understanding this would be coming out of the $10 billion endowment, not everyone elses' tuition..). Or because it cuts off at a certain income bracket, that is a bad/unfair policy.. Or because they missed out on it, everyone else should too.. Like Brian said on social media, shitting on a good thing because it is not the best thing is a pervasive disease in society these days, and it is happening on this board...
Truly, it must be pretty miserable going through life finding the negative in everything.
Jeez.
Well put.
Couldn't agree more. I'm part of a program that mentors kids whose parents never attended college. I never realized how difficult it is for many people to not only matriculate but to graduate. Without an incredible amount of support, many drop out. State schools are in the business of educating their residents first. I hope other schools see this and follow suit.
I think this is a really promising idea. My only concern is that families making over this figure don't suddenly see a huge tuiition hike to compensate.
Quick math that could be a bit off. But if this pays for tuition alone (not room/board, books etc.) and comes out of the endowment, the endowment alone would pay for 172,400 kids without the endowment ever growing... It would take DECADES (hundred of years even) for that number of kids to benefit from this. Plus, the endowment will grow, it will not run out...
U of M can afford this without the cost being thrown at other people.
Is this just PR? I mean how much aid does an in-state kid get now if their parents make <$65K?
Way back when I was at M, the "poor" in-state kids that I knew almost all had significant if not full scholarships.
I was a poor in-state kid... inflation adjusted, our income would have come in at about
$50K.
I graduated with about $12K in loan debt, and I worked the entire time I was in college and every summer full time.
I graduated in 1998.
I just don't see this as a big deal. Probably a great PR move, and maybe will have some impact to students/families on either side of the threshold. But the focus needs to be the ever rising costs of college across the board, and getting at the root cause. US government policy (Republican or Democrat) has been that everyone should be able to afford to go to college, so they intervened in the market. Now colleges can increase costs without check due to inelastic demand - either a rich kid's parents will pay the cost regardless of price tag, or a poor kid with easy access to aid/loan money. There's just no real pressure to provide the best value - a top product (education) at a low price.