Are YOU Well-Endowed?

Over 100 American colleges and universities have endowments over 1 BILLION dollars. You'd better believe these schools are the ones that are going to offer the best financial aid to accepted students. I did a little sleuthing and came up with this Top Ten list (leaving out state "systems" with multiple schools, like U of California. For a more complete list of school endowments, click here. 

1. Harvard 25 billion

2. Yale 15 billion

3. Stanford 12 billion

4. Princeton 11 billion

5. MIT  6.7 billion

6. Columbia 5.1 billion

7. U of Michigan 4.9 billion

8. Emory 4.4 billion

9. U of Penn 4.3 billion

10. Northwestern 4.2 billion

How Bad is the Cost of College?

Let's see. . .Here is a chart comparing from the Wall Street Journal comparing rise in the cost of college to the rise in the cost of other "consumer" goods:

Rising Consumer Costs 1985-2005

Item Increase

Gasoline 66.80%

Food 88.70?

Housing 93.00%

Car Repair/Maintenance  103.0%

Rent 114.0%

Medical Care 218.7%

College Tuition 330.2%

In comparison, how much has family income risen during the same time period?

Estimates range between 13% and 16%. 

This is outrageous! And the solution colleges and the government provide us? Loans. More debt and credit enslavement. 

Whatever Happened to Scholarships?

Once upon a time, if you were a good student, worked hard, and earned good grades, you could hope to win a scholarship to help you pay for college.

Not now.

Today, if you go to all the trouble of locating a good scholarship and applying for it (tons of work) and are actually lucky enough to win it, it probably won't help you one bit.

Why?

Financial aid. Unless you are paying 100% of your college tuition bills (and, let's face it, with a single year of college at $50K at many institutions, few people are) that scholarship money is going to help the college—not you.

That's right. They'll smile, thank you for the money, and happily reduce your amount of aid by the amount of the scholarship award.

Hardly worth the effort now, is it?

That's what you call the law of unintended consequences. You take away the incentive for earning a scholarship and sure enough, people stop trying to win them.

Today, the best financial bet is to get in to one of the highly endowed universities which offer gold-plated financial aid. More on that in an upcoming post.

Is Graduating From High School Obsolete?

It would seem so, in New Hampshire at least, where officials are now allowing students who pass a state test to go straight from 10th grade to community college or vocational school.

Students who want a four-year college degree would have to stay in high school until the traditional graduation age.

Apparently, this will save New Hampshire a lot of money on education.

No word on what students won't be learning.

Thoughts?

CREDIT CRUNCH?

We've learned a few lessons about unsustainable credit during the Housing Crash. Isn't it about time these financial realities were applied to the costs of a college education?

Tuition has been rising at more than double the rate of inflation for decades now. The only thing keeping the cost of college so high has been the apparent endless willingness of families to take out larger and larger student loans and for students to mortgage their futures.

Should a young person be enslaved by debt for decades, simply to get a toehold in the workforce?

Was it access to easy credit that made this happen?

Will the credit crunch finally make access to student loans difficult, if not impossible? Could this finally put a limit on the ever-spiraling cost of college tuition?