

Paying for College -- The Rich Are Different - cwan
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/08/t_paying_for_co.html

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faramarz
I was lucky to be hired as department web designer in my freshman year and
eventually moved my way up to bigger and richer departments throughout my
years at UofT. Essentially paid my tuition with their own money, and got dept.
deans on my good side.

For all of you starting school in September, the first 2 weeks are when all
the positions fill up. If you want to earn income on campus, go meet with your
department secretary/advisor right now to build rapport.

~~~
JacobAldridge
And be prepared to knock on doors and introduce yourselves to them. I found
that daunting as a freshman because I was used to the off-limit sacrosanct
staff room at my high school, but college lecturers and tutors and especially
advisors expect it, you won't be interrupting them (if they don't want to be
interrupted they either won't be there or, worst case, will ask you to come
back later) so there's nothing to be worried about.

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Goladus
Here is the actual article, which is barely five paragraphs and two images, as
opposed to the original link which merely links one of the images:

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/how-
americans-p...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/how-americans-
pay-for-college/?src=twt&twt=nytimeseconomix)

------
alexkiwi
It's surprising that student income put toward their education is the same
across the board. Would have thought the wealthier wouldn't work during
college. I even know some students whose parents won't let them work.

~~~
endtime
>Would have thought the wealthier wouldn't work during college.

Why? How do you think the wealthy got wealthy? The vast majority, at least in
the US, got there through hard work, and if they're smart enough to accumulate
wealth then they're probably smart enough to instill those same values in
their children.

I'll add a data point: I come from an upper-middle class background - no
butlers, but my parents' house is pretty nice, and we've had some very nice
vacations. My parents started with nothing, but my dad worked ridiculous hours
for 20+ years in the finance industry and it paid off. As for college, my
parents paid for 3 years of undergrad and I paid for the fourth (housing,
food, tuition, expenses, everything), out of a combination of my own earnings
and well-invested savings. I worked as a TA for four semesters (one of which I
TAed two classes), a research assistant for one, and I ran the CS dept. TA lab
for one. I also had paid internships every summer, starting the summer between
high school and college.

For grad school, my parents paid my tuition (but nothing else) my first
quarter, and after that I paid my own way between TAships every quarter, an
additional internship during one quarter, and another summer internship.
Oh...and I also started a company halfway through grad school.

The only times since in the last 6+ years (I'm 24) that I haven't had a job
were my freshman year and the summer between undergrad and grad school.
So...you might want to rethink your assumptions about the work ethic of people
from wealthier backgrounds. I'm actually kind of offended at the suggestion
that having relatively affluent parents would compromise my values or their
parenting.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
"I also had paid internships every summer"

From your family's standpoint, the pay you received was probably immaterial
compared to value of the experience. What if you had received two internship
offers one summer: (1) A boring but well-paid position, and (2) a really
exciting/enriching opportunity that didn't even pay enough to cover your
living expenses? Would your family have forced you into #1, or would you have
been subsidized for #2? Given the time and money your parents had already
invested in you during the first 20 years of your life in hopes of helping you
be a happy and prosperous adult, it wouldn't be rational for them not to hand
over, say, $10K to help you out given these circumstances (presuming that your
family has accumulated sufficient wealth that the $10K really wouldn't make
much difference in their lives).

I'm not making some sort of, "Oh...your rich, so blah..." sort of comment. My
family would have supported me while I pursued #2 I ended up with well-paid
internships each summer, so it didn't matter anyway. And, I didn't work during
the academic calender (sans a few consulting gigs here and there).

Kids from poorer families often end-up taking jobs while in school which have
a negative NPV for their lives. Why pay $10's of K per year to go to college
and then spend 20 hours/week waiting tables instead of studying? Is it
rational to graduate debt free with a 2.5 GPA? I was about to claim that these
kids take such jobs because there's no way for them to borrow money for living
expenses while in school, but this may not be true -- I'm not at all familiar
with student loan programs. Perhaps these kids have an irrational fear of
debt?

Or, could their fear of debt be rational? To allow "middle class" folks to
attend Harvard Business School, the school partnered with Citi to extends well
over $40K/year in living expenses debt at a low interest rate. As an MBA from
HBS is quite a ticket to a good income, students have little fear of going
into hock. However, the poorer kids are probably more likely to be working
while attending mediocre schools close to their families' homes. Will their
post-college earnings be high enough to make taking on debt rational? One
would hope, but I'm a believer in the "education bubble."

~~~
endtime
>From your family's standpoint, the pay you received was probably immaterial
compared to value of the experience.

You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I have any sort of
access to my parents' money. My bank account contains only what I've earned
(and been given over the years at e.g. my bar mitzvah, though most of that was
depleted by paying for a year of college, and _that_ 's only because of a
roughly 450% return over 7 years...my dad managed my "portfolio" very well for
me, which is a benefit I will admit a lot of people don't have).

>What if you had received two internship offers one summer: (1) A boring but
well-paid position, and (2) a really exciting/enriching opportunity that
didn't even pay enough to cover your living expenses? Would your family have
forced you into #1, or would you have been subsidized for #2?

The situation didn't come up, so it's hard to say. I studied something with
practical and relatively lucrative applications (CS) rather than stuff like
classics (actually, now that I mention it a good undergrad friend of mine had
a full ride scholarship because of her family's financial situation, and she
majored in classics). If it had come up, well, I'm sure there's a point at
which making an extra $1-2k on the summer wouldn't be worth the experiential
opportunity cost, but I primarily worked to make money, and would have balked
at an internship that didn't even pay my living expenses. Believe me, the
educational benefit of grading 400 proofs every week, half of them written by
symbolic systems sophomores, suffers from very steep diminishing returns.

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Towle_
I would love to know what claim the author is trying to make with this. The
$35k-100k bracket and $100k+ bracket are almost exactly the same in every area
other than parent income/savings. Essentially, the way the "rich" pay for
college is only "different" in that [newsflash!] they purchase a more
expensive product and they pay more for it. Um...was this supposed to be
surprising? Informative? They do that with everything else, too.

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_delirium
The fact that grants and scholarship are nearly identical across the range
(~$6k) is somewhat surprising. I guess fewer grants/scholarships are need-
based than I thought?

~~~
DLWormwood
Grants are usually need based, but scholarships usually aren’t, since many are
granted based on some kind of extracurricular achievement or social legacy
related to the student.

For every United Negro College Fund scholarship out there, there’s a Daughters
of the Confederacy scholarship or some such, to pick a particularly extreme
example. From my (and maybe my sister’s) research while I attended college,
this sort of funding is very prone to political back-and-forth and cultural
“reactance.”

