minahkaypoh

Today's NY Times notes the importance of considering the net price families pay for college, not the sticker price, using an example from Wisconsin. Specifically, in a column by David Leonhardt, Professor Sarah Turner presents data from the College Navigator tool (which in turn draws on the 2009-2010 IPEDS information) to show that " at the less-selective campuses in the University of Wisconsin system, for example, the average net annual cost for a year of tuition, room, board and fees in 2010-11 was almost $10,000 for families making less than $30,000, Ms. Turner said. At the flagship campus in Madison, by contrast, the equivalent net cost was $6,000. " While I'm certainly friendly to Turner's primary point-- that because of institutional financial aid attending the state's flagship may be effectively less expensive  for needy students than attending another public university-- the recitation of this figure gave me cause for concern. First, as I pointed out h...

Sunday's New York Times carried a front page story on a crisis in American higher education. I think that's excellent, and I'm thrilled for Caroline Hoxby and Chris Avery, whose research is featured. These economists managed to draw national attention to a major problem-- despite decades of public and private investment, barely 1 in 10 children from low-income families earns a bachelor's degree. And this isn't because they aren't smart, or aren't taking college admissions exams-- plenty of them taking many of the right steps towards college.  But they are not ending up there. Hoxby and Avery begin to help us understand why  by evaluating the merits of several urban legends, two of which are repeated by seemingly every elite college admissions officer in the country: (1) "We don't have more Pell recipients on campus because there are simply too few students from low-income families academically qualified to get in here."  In other words, bright...