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

(news.mit.edu)
736 points gnabgib | 22 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 2.182s | 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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JumpCrisscross ◴[20 Nov 24 20:00 UTC] No.42197538[source]▶
It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.
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1. changoplatanero ◴[20 Nov 24 22:06 UTC] No.42198599[source]▶
Why is the price you have to pay for something dependent on how much money your parents make? Feels so unfair
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2. mh- ◴[20 Nov 24 22:15 UTC] No.42198688[source]▶
In my opinion, you're reasoning about it incorrectly.

What if I said: the price is the same for everyone, but people with less access to money get proportionally more assistance paying that price?

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3. s1artibartfast ◴[20 Nov 24 22:18 UTC] No.42198715[source]▶
Because it is really a discount to the parents, not the student. It is understood that few 17 year olds have saved enough money to pay MIT's tuition of $85k/year for 4 years and parents are usually footing the bill.

Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not to spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty strong case that it is their parents screwing them over, not the school. The school doesn't owe a discount to prospective students.

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4. changoplatanero ◴[20 Nov 24 22:28 UTC] No.42198781[source]▶
still seems weird to me. is there any other product for 18-22 year olds where the price changes depending on their parents wealth?
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5. mh- ◴[20 Nov 24 22:31 UTC] No.42198811{3}[source]▶
Interesting question. I can't think of anything outside of the education sphere, no. Maybe someone else will chime in with an example.
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6. feanaro ◴[20 Nov 24 22:40 UTC] No.42198891[source]▶
So there is an upper limit, which is the real price?
7. bigstrat2003 ◴[20 Nov 24 22:44 UTC] No.42198916[source]▶
> Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not to spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty strong case that it is their parents screwing them over, not the school.

No you can't. The school is the one choosing to set their prices based on the parents, who might or might not have anything to do with the student's school budget. That is the school's faulty assumption, and they, not the parents, are the ones screwing over those students.

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8. bigstrat2003 ◴[20 Nov 24 22:46 UTC] No.42198927{4}[source]▶
I would argue that financing a purchase (say, a house or car) falls into this category. The object itself does not change price, but the financing will change price wildly depending on whether the parents have good credit and can cosign the loan.
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9. changoplatanero ◴[20 Nov 24 22:49 UTC] No.42198956{5}[source]▶
This one makes sense to me cause the price (interest) is related to the risk or repayment. The way the universities do it is they want to find out how much money is in your parents bank account and then take as much of it as possible.
10. dragonwriter ◴[20 Nov 24 22:58 UTC] No.42199024{3}[source]▶
> still seems weird to me. is there any other product for 18-22 year olds where the price changes depending on their parents wealth?

If by “price” you mean, “net price after available subsidies”, then, yeah: healthcare, housing, and food, among others.

The difference is that the subsidies are usually public, whereas the education subsidies are by the seller—but the seller is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the entire premise of which, and the reason donations to them are tax deductible to the donor on top of the nonprofit being tax exempt, is that the nonprofit functions serves social needs in lieu of the government doing so.

11. Jare ◴[20 Nov 24 23:02 UTC] No.42199048{3}[source]▶
When I was 18-22 and living with my parents (pretty normal in Europe) I worked and contributed to the house expenses. I'm pretty sure kids of rich people don't do that. If I wanted to take out a loan, my parent's wouldn't be able to provide guarantees and thus the kind of loan and conditions I had access to would be much different than those a kid with rich parents could. In University people could also get grants based on your family income.

Those examples are varied and are not the same thing as purchasing a concrete product, yet I believe they are relevant to your question - education is a service that supports society, not a concrete product for your personal use and enjoyment. How and if you get it, relies not entirely on you at that point in your life, but heavily on your parents and in general on your family as a single economic unit to which you belong.

12. ndriscoll ◴[20 Nov 24 23:15 UTC] No.42199140[source]▶
You can't make that case at all. The price these name-brand schools ask is pretty much "how much do you(r parents) have?", and your kids could instead go to state school (if they can get into MIT, they probably qualify for a full ride scholarship or at least close) and have that tuition go to an ~80% down payment on their first house.
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13. s1artibartfast ◴[20 Nov 24 23:29 UTC] No.42199248{3}[source]▶
My point is that the school has zero obligation to a prospective student. If the parents have the means to pay, but dont want to, that seems to be a bigger question of responsibility and obligation.
14. s1artibartfast ◴[20 Nov 24 23:30 UTC] No.42199259{3}[source]▶
I agree with that. I dont see how that is MIT's problem.
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15. ndriscoll ◴[21 Nov 24 00:01 UTC] No.42199512{4}[source]▶
It's not their problem, but they're setting the absurd price, so it's not the parents screwing over the kids somehow. The price being so outrageously high does also call into question whether their charitable endowments could reasonably be characterized as part of a tax avoidance scam.
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16. orangecat ◴[21 Nov 24 02:22 UTC] No.42200441{5}[source]▶
True, although that's sort of the opposite. If your parents have resources and choose to help you out, the car loan will be cheaper. If it were similar to the college scenario, the dealership would say "your parents are rich, so we're going to charge you more because they'll be able to afford it". Of course that would never work because there's competition in the auto market, while prestigious colleges are effectively a cartel.
17. s1artibartfast ◴[21 Nov 24 04:20 UTC] No.42201072{5}[source]▶
>The price being so outrageously high does also call into question whether their charitable endowments could reasonably be characterized as part of a tax avoidance scam.

I dont see how that follows at all. They spend more on students than they receive in tuition funds. Who would they be scamming? What if they offered a million dollar education? I still dont see how that would impact their non-profit status.

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18. baq ◴[21 Nov 24 06:49 UTC] No.42201790{3}[source]▶
It isn’t a mcburger. It’s an investment with an excepted variable return realized over like 4-5 decades. There’s almost nothing else an 18-22 can do that has comparable odds of increasing value of oneself in dollar terms and in impossible-to-measure-society terms than getting accepted into a good school.

(E.g. you hear about college dropouts starting businesses all the time. You barely ever hear that about people who haven’t attended college at all.)

19. ndriscoll ◴[21 Nov 24 15:47 UTC] No.42205495{6}[source]▶
If they offered a million dollar education, I'd say the IRS should heavily scrutinize their budget, and if they did manage to stay within the letter of the law, it's likely that the law should be fixed because holistically, it's unlikely that they're truly spending over 20x what comparable universities do on educating students.
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20. s1artibartfast ◴[21 Nov 24 16:07 UTC] No.42205695{7}[source]▶
What laws are you worried about specifically? You could run a non-profit giving million dollar spa days.
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21. ndriscoll ◴[21 Nov 24 18:10 UTC] No.42206969{8}[source]▶
You can't run a 501(c)(3) giving million dollar spa days though. If you're actually running e.g. a 501(c)(7) social club, then your investment income is taxable, and there are limits on unrelated business activities. If you're an educational nonprofit and your purported spending on education is wildly out of line with what it costs elsewhere, that should raise eyebrows as to whether that money is being spent on education.
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22. s1artibartfast ◴[21 Nov 24 18:56 UTC] No.42207409{9}[source]▶
I dont think it is as clear as that. My understanding is much of the distinction between those two comes down to who the beneficiary is and if it is a self serving private membership, or serving the public.

Either way, I dont see the educational requirements for costs in line with other institutions, especially when the institutions can easily showing they are spending more on the students than they are charging. Discounting a $100k educational experience to 85k is still a benefit to the public. Someone offering a different educational experience for $20k doesn't negate that.

If we want more cheaper universities and education as a society, we should think about creating them, not trying to force expensive universities to be cheaper.

The challenge is that people don't actually want cheap accessible education, they want luxury too.