Originally Posted By: Donald
There are many excellent state universities. No need to go to an ivy league if it means being up to your eye balls in debt.
The truth is that the Ivy League, which consists of eight specific schools by the way, despite some specious claims to the contrary in this thread,
won't leave you up to your eyeballs in debt.
The elite schools, like Harvard and Yale, use their endowments to support need-blind admissions and need-based aid. If your family makes less than $65K/year, you go for FREE. 20% of Harvard's students attend for free. The college even considers the incidental costs during the semester, including laundry, travel to/from home, etc. in the determination of costs. Other family members in college are considered as well.
The students who graduate up to their eyeballs in debt are the ones who are NOT in the Ivy League. Many private colleges and universities simply can't provide the financial aid that the Ivies can. Yale's endowment is about $25 billion. They don't even need the tuition to run the institution, while many private schools need every dollar from tuition just to meet budget.
The combination of child expectation and parental indulgence leads to many students going to a "dream" school that offers wonderful amenities; gyms, rec centers, dorms, theaters, etc. with which the child falls in love...to the financial detriment of both child and parent.
There is a myth that you have to go to college in the first place...when my electrician has achieved far more than most college graduates, I dispute that myth. Extraordinary pressure on parents to send kids to college has distorted the supply/demand balance in higher education, leading to the creation of many "degree" mills that charge $45K/year and more without any financial aid.
Those are financial traps into which desperate parents and starry-eyed kids fall routinely.
On BITOG, I see many threads that find fault with the Ivy League...a bit of Schadenfreude, perhaps...with a tinge of envy...
But that video piece has a political agenda, and it shows about a dozen people, who may or may not be Yale students (the producer was standing in public areas, into which any person can walk, not in the areas of campus which have limited access). So, how many Yalies turned down his petition? How many signers were verified as actually being Yalies and not New Haven residents?
Funny how many of you are willing to accept this piece at face value, without questioning the methodology or results, when you apply such a rigorous standard of evidence to mundane topics like oil selection, or ammo performance.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid
http://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability
http://news.yale.edu/2015/09/24/investment-return-115-brings-yale-endowment-value-256-billion