Allow me to direct your attention to a recent article in the New York Times regarding how families choose to finance higher education:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/education/10aid.html
The NYTimes (or I guess, specifically Mr. Glater) could not be showing off their upper-middle class stripes more blatantly, in my opinion. It's almost shameful how ignorantly he treats such a widespread and serious problem as adequately meeting rising educational costs in a world where retirement is no longer secure. Of course this may just be me reading into the fact that he has no (and can't have any) figures for students dealing with this issue to back up this bit of "news," but then again the article emmanates a very strong insinuation that students fronting financial costs is somehow the fault of parental moral decay rather than hard economics. The general acceptance that the average parents are more than willing, but more importantly capable of paying exorbitant costs from which they will get no clear returns is innacceptable in the face of the fact that, whether it's redeeming to a financial aid officer or not, past "discretional spending" (which is doubtfully always luxury goods) is a reality that families in our credit society have to deal with. On top of that, the comment that parents are willing to make any sacrifice to see their child get a Harvard education is not only bad journalism (it's based entirely on financial aid workers' opinions about whether they see a trend or not, opinions that they have strong reason to bias) but makes an exception to what should be the point of the article for no good reason: to be able to make any sacrifice, all parents of Harvard undergrads would have to have something to sacrifice to begin with. Although a higher proportion of wealthy students attend Harvard, granting acceptance is a need-blind process, meaning that logically students would struggle just as much there as anywhere. Even if the trend is in fact existant at Harvard, the journalist could first attribute it to Harvar's superior financial aid policy before falling back on the hazy ideological theory of parental attitudes. In the end this article hurts the effort to improve the rates on outside funding by failing to bring to light the scope of the problem of student self-support. I'm offended.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/education/10aid.html
The NYTimes (or I guess, specifically Mr. Glater) could not be showing off their upper-middle class stripes more blatantly, in my opinion. It's almost shameful how ignorantly he treats such a widespread and serious problem as adequately meeting rising educational costs in a world where retirement is no longer secure. Of course this may just be me reading into the fact that he has no (and can't have any) figures for students dealing with this issue to back up this bit of "news," but then again the article emmanates a very strong insinuation that students fronting financial costs is somehow the fault of parental moral decay rather than hard economics. The general acceptance that the average parents are more than willing, but more importantly capable of paying exorbitant costs from which they will get no clear returns is innacceptable in the face of the fact that, whether it's redeeming to a financial aid officer or not, past "discretional spending" (which is doubtfully always luxury goods) is a reality that families in our credit society have to deal with. On top of that, the comment that parents are willing to make any sacrifice to see their child get a Harvard education is not only bad journalism (it's based entirely on financial aid workers' opinions about whether they see a trend or not, opinions that they have strong reason to bias) but makes an exception to what should be the point of the article for no good reason: to be able to make any sacrifice, all parents of Harvard undergrads would have to have something to sacrifice to begin with. Although a higher proportion of wealthy students attend Harvard, granting acceptance is a need-blind process, meaning that logically students would struggle just as much there as anywhere. Even if the trend is in fact existant at Harvard, the journalist could first attribute it to Harvar's superior financial aid policy before falling back on the hazy ideological theory of parental attitudes. In the end this article hurts the effort to improve the rates on outside funding by failing to bring to light the scope of the problem of student self-support. I'm offended.
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