What the hell are you talking about? You can still apply for a dependency override.
So you think that if everyone was on the honor system the majority would be honest? Sorry, wouldn’t happen.
Bright students with parental support from a family of means should not have an equal chance against bright students from poor backgrounds when it comes to needs based aid.
I’m old enough that when I went to college it was more of the honor system - I think there was a legal emancipation age for financial aid closer to 21, but it was pretty easy to get emancipated before that for financial aid. And I know people whose parents could have EASILY afforded college (back then, a reasonable college was reasonable) who went on the largesse of the State because their parents wanted a new Mercedes.
College is much more expensive, States don’t have the tax revenue, the Fed doesn’t have the revenue and what revenue they have they don’t prioritize unlimited financial aid, and even colleges have seen their endowments go down. Someone has to pay for your education - it can be you - and if your parents refuse to pay, it might have to be you. But while college is really expensive - it can also be less expensive - two years of community college and two at a State school won’t cost you much more than a new car.
Same here. I didn’t have to apply for a dependency override, I just said they my parents didn’t support me and that was that. Which was true, not because they wouldn’t have helped if I asked, but because the idea of asking my parents for financial support when I was old enough to vote, join the army, buy beer, etc. seemed to me to be something that just isn’t done.
The rules changed somewhere around '81 or '82 IIRC. I do remember that my younger sisters had to include our parents income when applying for financial aid, but I didn’t.
I may be older than you- when I was in college ( graduated in '86) , all you had to do was claim you lived separately from your parents ( even if that was grandma’s rent free basement - where you didn’t actually live) , claim that they didn’t support you and not be listed as a dependent on their tax returns and you were an independent student. I knew a whole lot of people who got enough Federal and State aid to more than cover their tuition but since their parents actually paid for their tuition, books and support , they used the grants as spending money. Perhaps some small percentage of applications were audited, but nowhere near all.
I wouldn't have any problem with the idea of considering every student as independent of their parents , just as long as everyone understands what that means. It means dividing the same pie by a lot more people, and it also means giving the millionaire's unemployed son as much aid as the janitor's unemployed son - even if the millionaire is in fact willing to pay the tuition.
graduated in '88. And I’d forgotten about the outright fraud. Most of my friends either really needed the financial aid or simply didn’t get it because their parents paid for them.
I also heard of people who’s parents got a “college years divorce” Mom would have custody, her income would go on the paperwork, and then aid would rain down from the sky.
I suspect that the situation for divorce has far more to do with protecting the State’s assets from fraudulent divorces in order to get financial aid than it does with ensuring young people get to college.
I dunno. I was out of the house at 17, starting in 1981, living with two buddies in a three-bedroom flat in Worcester MA. My share of the rent was 65 bucks a month. I could have picked up cans and made rent. As it were, I washed dishes for 2 bucks an hour and made enough to pay bills and consume heroic amounts of cheap beer and brown weed. Which is pretty much all I wanted to do anyway, so I had that going for me.
I feel so sorry for kids these days, no way in many parts of the country anyway can they experience that kind of freedom.
Don’t put words in my mouth, please. I said the problem is parents who would otherwise help their kid out except that the kid can get financial aid. That has nothing to do with forcing parents to contribute. It has to do with not making parents unwilling to contribute. There is a big difference between a parent who will not contribute no matter what and a parents who chooses not to contribute because their kid is getting government help. The law as it is prevents the second scenario.
I can’t figure out how you read my post and got the interpretation you did out of it. I specifically chose to avoid making a statement about what parents should do, because I know that’s a contentious subject. I stuck with factual statements, not opinions.
Why should the state (read: the American public) be forced to support a child instead of the parents, if the parents are able?
And that’s exactly what I said you were saying. And I say that it’s not a problem.
By that logic anyone whose parents could and would support them if they were unemployed shouldn’t be allowed to have jobs. Because there’s a big difference between a parent who will not contribute no matter what and a parent who chooses not to contribute because their kid has a job.
Calling it a problem sure sounds like an opinion to me.
Like him or not, blaming the President for your own shortcomings is pathetic.
I believe that most scholarship (not loan) aid at private colleges is provided by funds belong to the colleges. Why shouldn’t such a college be allowed to have a rule that says the decision of how much of this money we are going to give to you depends on how much your parents could reasonably be expected to contribute. I would think this would be true even if they used illogical rules so long as they were not discriminatory against a protected class.
Do you feel bad about the kid who didn’t get to go to college because you felt that using limited financial aid funds to service your ego was more important than using them to help poor kids go to school?
I would love a tuition system that didn’t rely on parents saving insane sums. But that’s not what we have, and today’s financial aid money (especially grants) is sharply limited. Using it to pay for middle class kids whose parents didn’t bother to save or who would rather use the college fund on something fun is not what it’s intended for. There really are ( lots!) of bright kids who wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for financial aid.
I graduated HS in 85 and remember the rules to be similar to what they seem to be now.
As for your second paragraph that’s exactly what I am saying I have a problem with. It would be great if someone helped me pay for my children’s college (donations welcome) but I know we won’t be eligible. And that’s fine as long as the money is really going to those that need it most.
No, because that didn’t happen. Most of my financial aid ended up being in the form of 3% and 5% loans, which I paid back years ago. My total grants might have topped $3000, but not by much. Everything I got in aid went straight to the school, plus at least a couple hundred bucks of my own money each semester. A couple of times I even had to take out short-term loans which weren’t really loans at all, just a one or two month extension on paying what financial aid didn’t cover.
So no, I didn’t use financial aid funds to “service my ego”, I used the limited financial aid I received to help pay some of my college costs, leaving my parents free to squander their limited money on raising my younger siblings.
They may have changed in 84 or 85- I’m sure at some point between starting college in '81 and graduating in '86 I stopped looking, because even under the looser rules I wasn’t eligible without lying. My parents didn’t claim me on their taxes and they didn’t really support me. But I did live with them and that was enough to make a student “dependent” even then.
Should have put a smilie there. I suspect most people would have a problem if they they thought it through and realized that the Walton family would receive financial aid if the parents’ income/assets aren’t considered at all. But I don’t think people think that far. They think of that one kid they know whose parents didn’t pay *and *who couldn’t get aid because of his parents income/lack of cooperation and who somehow couldn’t get a dependency override and forget that the overwhelming majority of under 24 year olds whose parents contribute to the extent that they can will also be eligible.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make that so personal and it seems like you didn’t lie or bend the rules. But given that financial aid is limited and many many people miss out on college because they can’t afford it, I would MUCH rather it go to people who actually NEED it to go to college, rather than people who have some other reason for wanting it. And I have nothing but contempt for people who lie or work they system because they want more aid than they need.
I must admit, I’d have a harder time asking for the state to support me than my parents, if it was a choice. I’d find it far more problematic to seek out public largesse intended for those in need.