NYT: Yale Cuts Expenses for Poor in a Move to Beat Competitors

Yale Cuts Expenses for Poor in a Move to Beat Competitors
By GREG WINTER

Published: March 4, 2005


In an effort to outdo its rivals, Yale University said yesterday that it would no longer require parents earning less than $45,000 a year to pay anything toward their children's educations.

Harvard announced a similar program last year, freeing parents who earn $40,000 or less from paying anything, and the change helped raise its applications to record levels. Several of Yale's other competitors, including Princeton, have taken a slightly different approach by no longer requiring loans for low-income students, and they also believe the move helped increase applications.

Yale's change comes after its students demanded financial relief, and is arguably more generous than many of the financial aid overhauls at other schools, public and private universities alike. The University of North Carolina, for instance, no longer requires students from families of four earning about $37,000 or less to take out any loans to cover school expenses. Rice did the same but set the income bar at $30,000....

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Only about 15 percent of Yale students' families earn little enough to benefit from the changes, but that is precisely the point, Mr. Levin said yesterday. The hope is that once low-income students know that going to Yale will not financially burden their families, more will apply. Longer-range hopes are for a more diverse Ivy League and a more equitable society....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/education/04yale.html

and all of the other elite secret societies.

that college will be more accessible to either the very poor or the very rich, and it's the people in the middle who are going to have a problem. It will be the kid with two school teacher or a school teacher and a cop parents -- for whom going to Yale is going to be a huge financial risk, especially since we're creating an economy that is slowly removing all the employment possibilities that allow the recreation of the kind of middle class that that person came out of.

The super poor person is coming out of a zero opportunity situation into an opportunity situation by going to yale for free -- the risk to reward ratio is pretty good. Even if the person becomes a school teacher, they're going to come out way ahead (and with a Yale degree, they're more likely to become a principle, or superintendent, etc.), and they still have the chance of becoming a doctor, lawyer or investment banker.

But the middle class kid who has to pay full price could actually be taking a financial risk that might not justify the cost. That person might have to chose the state university instead, and roll the dice for the doctor or lawyer job with the state university degrees instead of with the Yale degree.

in admissions. Rich kids pay full tuition, and sometimes have parents who can even finance a new campus building, and are attractive to Admissions committees; they are also impressed with kids who are the first of their family to go to college, who have overcome great odds to be a candidate for admission. Middle class kids, whose parents have maybe gone to college, who are financially okay, but not rich -- they, I think, are at a disadvantage. The whole question of college admission, and financing, is, unfortunately, very often fraught with anxiety and heartbreak.

Lets see if the people living within a 5 mile zone of the campus have
an improved outlook... likely not... the poverty of new haven is a
disgrace to Yale... and this admissions stunt fails to address the
filth ouside the gates.