There's another side to need-based financial aid that tends to be ignored. For you to attend an expensive college for less than the average rate, someone else had to pay more than the average. That is, your discounted tuition increased the sticker price for someone else.
That's inherently unfair. It may sound reasonable to ask wealthy families to pay more in order to subsidise poor families, but there's no reasonable method to actually determine a family's wealth.
The usual practice is to look at the parents' savings. If a family has saved $200,000, they will be asked to pay a higher tuition rate than a family that only saved $20,000. But that's crazy: it penalizes families that save for higher education.
That's particularly harmful to middle class families. If you don't have any money, then you can go to an Ivy League school for free (via financial aid). If you have a great deal of money, then you can pay the full tuition rate and still have assets left over. But if you only have some savings, then a college bill can easily wipe out everything you have.
The article is about loans. A loan is not a discount. And if you're talking about need-based financial aid, that's usually financed by people (often alumni) who decide to pay into a fund specifically for tuition subsidies. That means he didn't get a "discount" that average students had to make up.
That's inherently unfair. It may sound reasonable to ask wealthy families to pay more in order to subsidise poor families, but there's no reasonable method to actually determine a family's wealth.
The usual practice is to look at the parents' savings. If a family has saved $200,000, they will be asked to pay a higher tuition rate than a family that only saved $20,000. But that's crazy: it penalizes families that save for higher education.
That's particularly harmful to middle class families. If you don't have any money, then you can go to an Ivy League school for free (via financial aid). If you have a great deal of money, then you can pay the full tuition rate and still have assets left over. But if you only have some savings, then a college bill can easily wipe out everything you have.