

MIT to be tuition-free for families earning less than $75,000 a year - pius
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/tuition-0307.html

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timr
Well, damn. Had this existed in the mid-90s, it would have changed were I went
to school.

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run4yourlives
Had it existed, it may have changed my life... although I actually love my
life right now, so maybe that's overrated. :-)

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iamdave
Feel free to take this at face value, but this somewhat concerns me. I
attended community college for one semester before transferring to a state uni
where tuition was almost 20,000 dollars more and in my experience the
characteristic and personal motivation was much different. At the community
college (where students often did not have to pay tuition at all because of
the low cost bundled with state provided financial support) students seemed
apathetic about attending class, and personal success whereas the students at
the state uni (who faced the prospect of having to pay thousands in student
loans) this was the complete opposite.

Students had a higher degree of personal commitment, and motivation to succeed
at the uni level. Who knows if this will be the case at MIT, but this is just
what I happened to experience when the disparity of income became as overt as
it did

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jey
Why is it good for kids to be motivated by the fact that they're paying a lot
of money? People should be in school if they're motivated by their desire to
learn, or they should just get out and stop diluting the experience for
everyone else.

Our society doesn't do a good job of serving kids who just want job training
and don't have an academic bent. Right now we lump together the people who
want vocational training and a certificate of competency with the people who
are passionate and want to learn. This leads to a mixed weird situation where
too much irrelevant stuff is "taught"[1] from the perspective of the
vocational students, and the course work is largely busy work from the
perspective of those who want to learn.

That "Mathematician's Lament" that appeared on here recently is a great
exposition on this problem. <http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

1\. I use the word "taught" loosely here to refer to the process of
memorization and regurgitation that is standard in the formal education
system.

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curi
/upvote for caring about the source of motivation

~~~
BrandonM
I downvoted this because I've seen three "/*vote" comments from you just today
and they're starting to get annoying. What's the point of the "/" again?

~~~
rms
what's the point of Paul Graham taking away voting rights and refusing to give
them back?

~~~
allenbrunson
i don't know the whole story of pg taking away your voting rights, but as a
guess, i'd say he did so because he felt you were abusing the privilege.

so now, rather than getting the message and being cool about it, you and curi
are incessantly belly-aching instead.

in pg's place, i'd be thinking it's about time to ban both of you altogether.

~~~
rms
>i'd say he did so because he felt you were abusing the privilege.

I still don't think giving NSX2 20 upvotes was a very big deal. After Paul
told me to stop, I did, then he took away my voting rights three days later.
He didn't like my reply to his nasty email telling me to stop upvoting. My
reply was "Sometimes you take yourself too seriously." Paul interpreted this
as a "Fuck you." Which it really wasn't, though in the context of the email he
sent me, I could see why anything other than "Yes sir, I'm sorry" could be
interpreted as "fuck you." He has since ignored my attempts to apologize.

~~~
pius
I don't get it . . . were you playing around with the voting mechanism and you
figured out how to give someone multiple upvotes for one item? Otherwise, I'm
not sure I understand what you mean.

~~~
curi
voting up someone's comment history.

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papersmith
I wonder if it applies to Canadians or other foreign students. I had a friend
who ditched MIT for Waterloo because the latter gave him full scholarship.

~~~
rglovejoy
MIT is a private institution. It's their endowment, so they should be able to
support Canadians or anyone else if they choose to.

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codeLullaby
Wow! I studied at one of South India's finest Engineering Colleges [College Of
Engineering,Trivandrum( Not even remotely comparable to MIT in facilities)].
My tuition fee was less than 50 $ a year ! [Accommodation :- 50 cents a
month!! Food from College: approx $20] Entry to the college is 100% based on
merit.

[FYI,here in Kerala a decent beef steak costs $7 , 320 gram pack of Top Ramen
Noodles cost $1.1 and a litre of petrol @ $1.24 ]

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michjeanty
If parent's assets combine with income is less than $60,000 for the year,
students get to attend Harvard for free. If less than $90,000, students would
pay 30% of the school tuition. I thought I would post that for people to know.

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rglovejoy
It would have been nice for the Institute to have done this when I was an
undergrad there. I only wish that it didn't have to require a Senate
investigation to get them to open up the pursestrings.

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mpc
To me, it seems like a random number. 75k can be a lot or very little
depending where you live.

What if your parents make 76000?

~~~
dfranke
I assume that tuition is still a continuous function of income. I doubt you
suddenly pay full boat if you're a dollar over $75k.

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neilk
I wonder how many people are really going to take advantage of this. I think
it will tend to benefit academic families more than disadvantaged communities.

If you have two parents working and they're earning less than $75,000 per year
combined, I kind of wonder how they're going to afford the kind of things an
MIT-caliber mind needs, growing up.

~~~
BrandonM
If you're poor and you're not taking advantage of free (and moral)
opportunities to better yourself, that might be part of the reason that you're
poor to begin with. All you can really do is offer the opportunity; you can't
hold someone's hand and force them to take it.

Besides, what does an "MIT-caliber mind" need growing up? I would like to
think of myself as an MIT-caliber mind (99.5 percentile PSAT/NMSQT, 35 ACT,
1500 SAT), and I didn't have anything special growing up. We qualified for
reduced lunches, I worked at least 20 hours a week, played sports, did a lot
of work at home (my family completely renovated our first house ourselves
(everything from plumbing and electricity to siding), and we also had a dog-
breeding business we were starting up), and still did well enough in school to
be valedictorian. And before you get the wrong idea, I don't think I'm
anything special; I simply have an inquisitive mind that my mother (no
college) was smart enough to stimulate at a young age. After that it's just
hard work and good habits.

The implication that intelligence requires some material object is off mark.

~~~
neilk
Yes, but did you go to MIT? Or any "name" university? If not, why not?

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I have seen lots of insanely smart children whose
parents were not rich. But, _unfortunately_ , to get into these top colleges
takes more than brains.

Nowadays the average MIT freshman has had a lifetime of parents indulging
their curiosity and ambitions, prep tests and tutors, and this takes money.
Not to mention (in the USA) the expense of living in an area where the schools
are good enough. These days, sometimes it's the difference between a
microscope or just a textbook. Sometimes it's the difference between a
textbook and NO textbook. Many parents risk bankruptcy just to move to a
district where their kids get a little better education.

Finally, there is the problem of not having connections. A family making less
than $75,000 in household income probably doesn't have elite connections --
_unless_ they are a family of academics or artists. Which is why I mentioned
that.

When I was a kid, just buying a home computer was the equivalent expense of
10% of a laborer's salary. My Dad was able to do that because he was a bit
richer, and it changed my life.

Today, maybe the couple consisting of a cleaner and a day laborer could buy a
decent computer for the whole family -- but their kid is competing against a
richer kid that had two or three of their very own, to play with and take
apart.

If you want to believe in Horatio Alger and that anybody can do anything given
enough willpower, fine. But in my opinion, when the children of the rich are
often essentially coasting into such schools on a small measure of precocity,
it should not require superhuman effort for the poor geniuses to get in.

In my ideal world, we'd have something like Swiss policy; ensure that all
primary and secondary education is up to snuff, no matter where you live, and
kindergarten to Ph.D is free as long as you can make the grade.

~~~
BrandonM
I didn't go to MIT, but I feel I would have gotten in if I had applied. Other
factors were more important to me, though, like being the right distance from
home (about 3 hours driving) and going to a big enough school that I would be
able to take a wide variety of classes and change majors if necessary (I did,
three times). I think I also had the (somewhat accurate) feeling that the
college I chose would not make all that much difference. We can argue that
point all you want, but I'm still quite confident in my future in spite of
growing up "poor" and not going to MIT.

