There are thresholds and guidelines, but in my experience financial aid officers have a lot of flexibility and discretion. They look at the complete picture, including assets, number of other siblings that are dependents/in college, etc.
You can also appeal the financial aid decision, and just going to that trouble will often get you a bit more aid if you have a decent reason.
The depressing part was how many people obviously lie and misrepresent their financial situation to try to cheapen their student's aid cost. Not that I can really blame them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand. And there's basically no risk to trying, the aid officers just look at it and are like "obvious lie, rejected" or "possible lie, ask for supporting evidence/documents".
> Not that I can really blame them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand.
At a high enough income level, is it out of hand? If the parents' income is, say 7 figures per year, why not charge even more, and in doing so increase the assistance to those making closer to the median household income?
> why not charge even more, and in doing so increase the assistance to those making closer to the median household income?
Simple solutions like this readily suggest themselves. However, iiuc, in top-tier universities, tuition doesn't seem to be the significant proportion of revenues, so increasing fees wouldn't really enable anything and might have diminishing returns. For Harvard in 2019[0], the sources of revenue were:
- Philanthropy : 43%
- Research: 17%
- "Other": 18%
- Tuition: 22%
Also:
- number of students nationally has plateaued.
- tuition costs have reached limits of affordability.
2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings and I can understand the reaction to try to cut the corners a bit.
Inflated relative to what? The cost of providing the education? Or relative to its perceived value? The latter ultimately dictates the price. Perhaps $70k is the point after which really wealthy people say rebel and refuse to send their children there, regardless of how small a portion of their wealth it is?
> 2) at many income levels that are too high to qualify for aid, $70k per child per year still really stings
I agree, which is why I wonder why the $70k limit for those well above the income level where it stings.
Then again, a higher top-level tuition depends a lot on the distribution of very wealthy parents whose kids attend Harvard vs the just upper middle class (there is a large difference between the income/wealth those two groups after all, bigger than between the middle and upper middle-class, given the exponential shape of the wealth distribution curve).
And perhaps the very wealthy (let's say in today's terms net worth in the mid 10 millions and up) already make significant donations to the University, so it would be meaningless to raise tuition to i.e. $90k in that case.
There is a likelihood that many parents submit/falsify the financial aid application/documents. Hard to prove the student did it, and worse to rescind based on a parent's actions.
There are thresholds and guidelines, but in my experience financial aid officers have a lot of flexibility and discretion. They look at the complete picture, including assets, number of other siblings that are dependents/in college, etc.
You can also appeal the financial aid decision, and just going to that trouble will often get you a bit more aid if you have a decent reason.
The depressing part was how many people obviously lie and misrepresent their financial situation to try to cheapen their student's aid cost. Not that I can really blame them, even if you make enough money that your kids don't qualify for aid, $70,000+ per year per child is just out of hand. And there's basically no risk to trying, the aid officers just look at it and are like "obvious lie, rejected" or "possible lie, ask for supporting evidence/documents".