DISQUS

Ed · 9 months ago

Chris, research is helpful before writing demagogic screed. I go to one of those "criminally expensive" Ivy universities, and am here for free, because my school guarantees grants (not loans) to ensure that all have access regardless of ability to pay. Though there have been budget cutbacks, they are 100% NOT cutting financial aid at my Ivy, at least. I would doubt if the others are doing differently because of the negative PR fallout.

maudgonne · 9 months ago

Chris,

NO apostrophe.

Butch1 · 9 months ago

This is exactly the way a class-society is set up. The rich become educated because of their ability to pay for it and their sense of entitlement, and the poor and middle class turn into "worker-bees" because they can not afford to go to school. The rich end up in supervisory positions because of money, connections and education and those less educated or with none, do the manual labor. Of course, the republicans blame those less fortunate than they are with, "If you weren't so lazy and bilking the welfare system, you could have what I have, just pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and get to work." ( what work, what job, what boots, let alone, by what straps?! )

Steve_in_CNJ · 9 months ago

Looks like these are 2nd and 3rd tier schools. Bowdoin, Brandeis, Colby, Tufts, Middlebury, Carleton, Oberlin,... The ivies underwent a significant reform in the 70s and now take pride in relatively non-elite student bodies (if "elite" refers to economic class). They do pay most of their operating expenses from endowment income, which is down at least 30%. and my ivy has suspended all new building and non-essential improvements. but i haven't heard of any changes in admissions. since tuition is a small part of their budgets, i doubt if you could make up much of the loss that way.

devlzadvocate · 9 months ago

Things are crappy when you look back to January of this year as "the good ole' days". Remember the inauguration when we were all hopeful and happy? Yeah, that was fun!

Janine · 9 months ago

Chris -- I have to second Ed's comment. You don't know what you're talking about. I used to work in college financial aid -- The Ivies are among the handful of private schools NOT looking at people's financial aid status before letting them in. Not one Ivy League institution was mentioned in the New York Times article either, so why the bile?

Steve · 9 months ago

BUSHES not Bush's

maudgonne · 9 months ago

Wish you would focus on the pain at the state schools. They are the ones who have been really shafted.
It has been nearly twenty years since it became difficult to get a four year degree in four years at calif universities, just because the course offerings were so trimmed that to get "required courses" requires being there for FIVE years.
CA public high schools graduate people who need remedial courses in college, either due to limited availability of science courses in high school, or due to language issues the state is too cheap to address.
Teachers in community college feeders have smaller classes, but they also have no health care, and few other benefits. Just how many people come out of the ivies per year anyhow?
And just remember that it was an ivy that gave us bush and the nightmare we are living...

Anon · 9 months ago

I well remember a lecture I attended in my first year of university, many long years ago, which conclusively showed that stupid rich American undergraduates had a higher likelihood of graduating than poor but gifted students. I assume things have changed since then but the larger issue remains. Until you have a sensitive talent search covering the entire entering cohort and then deliver your best education to the winners without regard to their origins at all your institutions of higher education are never likely to operate at the highest possible level. If its left to individual professors to be God's talent scouts for lack of a better phrase, many of the best will never make it to the top. Its an inefficiency few societies can long afford. If we can screen the entire of population for a specific set of athletic skills (in most of the world that would be football I suppose) or musical aptitude, why could we not screen for thinking ability, amassed general knowledge and innovative potential. Extravagant talent seldom shows up clearly in standardized testing. If left to people like myself (and that's the way it is now), we are going to identify some who do make it to a real university but what about those who don't? I have often speculated that the discards become talented criminals who loot the system which ignored their potential. In light of recent events in criminal capitalist excess, I am reinforced in my beliefs.

Indigo · 9 months ago

In the history of the world, education has usually been reserved for the privileged. Our past 100 or 150 years of effort to make literacy and math and science skills available to the public has been moderately successful. One seismic shift in economics and public values and that success will melt away, disappearing faster than the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

faith · 9 months ago

Chris,
Your tirades against everything and everyone is getting old. My daughter just graduated from an Ivy league school and we are far from being elites. The school provided financial aid to every single one of her friends who were also from families that would not be considered elites.

Lisa · 9 months ago

But according to Chris, you're just one of those few people whose children they let in so that the rich elite universities can continue to sell themselves as 'open' while continuously undermining the working class. You're just a tool of the Man, duuude.