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Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

(news.mit.edu)
589 points gnabgib | 14 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 1.367s | source | bottom
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TheJoeMan ◴[20 Nov 24 19:26 UTC] No.42197249[source]▶
This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the salary. Essentially saying to sell off the family business for the college fund, which was a non-starter.

Small businesses are allegedly the backbone of America, and I feel these tuition support programs overlook this segment of the middle-class.

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nuancebydefault ◴[20 Nov 24 20:53 UTC] No.42198000[source]▶
Why are such things in the US so complicated? Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone!

That's the only fair way. Also, a set of well educated people pays itself back later in the form of mostly income and added value taxes, which provides money to keep studying for cheap for the next generation.

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1. itsoktocry ◴[20 Nov 24 21:45 UTC] No.42198435[source]▶
>Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone!

I'll go out on a limb and bet people in your country earn much less than the average American, too. Why? Why don't companies just pay these people more? IT all comes back in income and value added taxes.

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2. shafyy ◴[20 Nov 24 22:09 UTC] No.42198629[source]▶
I don't know where the OP lives. But in Switzerland, where world-class univeristies like the ETH cost something like $ 1.5k a year in tuition, I'm pretty certain that people earn more on average than in the USA.
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3. nuancebydefault ◴[20 Nov 24 22:27 UTC] No.42198773[source]▶
I live in Belgium, we earn quite a lot less on average indeed. However why would we need so much money? We can go to hospital, or even 20 times visit a dentist for that matter, without expensive insurance and without the fear of bankruptcy. We can have kids without fear of not being able to pay kintergarten.
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4. nuancebydefault ◴[20 Nov 24 22:32 UTC] No.42198828[source]▶
Yeah indeed a giant part (75 percent or so) of what the companies pay, does not directly go to the workers bank account.
5. ummonk ◴[20 Nov 24 22:42 UTC] No.42198900[source]▶
Americans earn more than Swiss people after taxes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
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6. LtWorf ◴[20 Nov 24 22:54 UTC] No.42198997{3}[source]▶
And after paying insurance?
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7. glimshe ◴[20 Nov 24 23:49 UTC] No.42199426{4}[source]▶
Most American workers have subsidized insurance from their job.

But how about if I ask "And after paying for mortgage?"

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8. yesco ◴[21 Nov 24 01:01 UTC] No.42199941{4}[source]▶
To throw in a data point on this for reference, as an American I pay around ~$220 a month (~$2,640 per year) on health insurance through my job, this comes out of my pre-taxed income. While I won't get into specifics on the details of the terms, I am quite happy with it.

I work in Massachusetts, but I live in New Hampshire. I pay more than double this on both Social Security fees & Massachusetts income taxes, which are non-deductible since New Hampshire has no income tax and makes up for that with higher property taxes (housing is cheaper though). Filtered to just health related services I can easily identify, in total I pay for Social Security, Medicare, and indirectly Massachusett's state healthcare (which I can only gain access to under limited conditions). Of these, only the private insurance fee directly benefits me, and I have little faith social security will actually pay out when I reach the qualifying age.

In terms of investment my HSA, and 401k are a much better dollar for dollar investment for my future finances than any government service, so I find it extremely unlikely I would ever truly benefit from public healthcare.

Despite my tone here, I'm more annoyed than upset about this. Due to the overall societal benefit, I'm not entirely against public healthcare depending on the details, I'm just under no illusion that it would be to my benefit, and I'm not much of an outlier. I'm also mostly convinced the root issue here is the inflated cost of healthcare rather than just the insurance aspect, public healthcare naively implemented would likely turn into yet another government subsidy for hospitals to devour imo.

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9. throwaway2037 ◴[21 Nov 24 04:16 UTC] No.42201049{3}[source]▶

    > We can have kids without fear of not being able to pay kindergarten.
FYI: Public kindergarten is 100% paid for by gov't across the US. I don't think any public schools in the US have tuition. (That said, there is no magical money. It is paid for by local taxes.) Where did you hear about this myth?

Also: In Belgium, can you really go to the dentist 20 times? Is there any good reason to allow this in a public healthcare system? If the barrier to entry for healthcare services is very low, then there must be (1) a lot of abuse... or (2) long waiting times... or (3) very high taxes. My guess in Belgium: A combination of (2) and (3).

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10. zeroonetwothree ◴[21 Nov 24 05:20 UTC] No.42201380{3}[source]▶
Kindergarten is free in the US. Also the vast majority of people pay a relatively small amount of their income for health insurance (and of course it’s free for 65+ who are the primary consumers).
11. jltsiren ◴[21 Nov 24 06:18 UTC] No.42201633{4}[source]▶
Kindergarten means different things in different countries, and that's probably the source of confusion. In Europe, it usually means a program that gradually transitions from daycare to a proper pre-school as the kids get older. Starting ages vary, but it seems to be 2.5 years in Belgium.
12. baq ◴[21 Nov 24 06:24 UTC] No.42201657{5}[source]▶
Mortgages seem constant in financialized economies, nobody can afford a home anywhere today.
13. jltsiren ◴[21 Nov 24 06:31 UTC] No.42201702{3}[source]▶
Those numbers mean disposable household income divided by the square root of household size. American households are unusually large for a developed country, and measures like that overestimate individual incomes relative to countries with smaller households.
14. jjav ◴[21 Nov 24 09:10 UTC] No.42202455{5}[source]▶
> To throw in a data point on this for reference, as an American I pay around ~$220 a month (~$2,640 per year) on health insurance

Having just filled my annual benefits selections tonight, here's my data point: health insurance is $3000/month on the company plan (36K/year).

Yes, the company "pays" for a percentage of that. But of course the entire $3K/month is part of my total compensation cost to the company. If healthcare wasn't so ludicrously expensive in the US, they could afford to pay me more, instead of funneling all this money to insurance company profits.