Who Wants to Be a 40K-ionaire?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the middle class is not very popular right now with many of the leading minds in academia. The merit aid that allows these plebes to have any hope of attending a top school is constantly under attack. Unpaid internships, inaccessible to students who have to work paying summer jobs, are encouraged. And you didn’t think that those much-reviled “helicopter parents” were making their demanding phone calls to professors from Greenwich or Winnetka, did you? The right sort of parents, probably Ivy grads themselves, would never be so gauche. It’s not like a failing grade will actually have any serious consequences for their progeny anyway.
The latest outrage is, predictably, AP classes. Not every student has equal access to them, a committee at Tufts argues. One socioeconomic group of students receives more AP credit than the rest.
That would be the group in the middle. And so something has to be done.
The Tufts committee grouped students by amount of aid received. The group receiving “low to medium aid” received a much higher average number of AP credits than those receiving “high aid,” who might not have had access to such classes — and a slightly higher number than those receiving “no aid,” who almost certainly did, and also probably were less likely to have worked high school jobs that precluded such a rigorous academic schedule.
AP classes are great for bypassing the big intro lectures and getting on to more interesting material, so a student can learn more over a college career. However, they can also allow students to graduate early. Now, which group do you think might have the greatest interest in finishing in fewer semesters? Try out this FAFSA calculator from the College Board before you answer. A family of 4 making $60,000 a year, with $200,000 home equity and $100,000 in various savings has an annual expected family contribution of $7233. And that’s according to the “federal methodology.” Many colleges use the “institutional methodology,” under which this family would pay $14,362 a year (not counting the student contribution.) They would qualify for “low to medium aid.”
And of course, some of that aid will take the form of loans. But Pell Grants could be increased, leading one “financial aid consultant” to worry that “many new students with family incomes above $40,000 [will become] eligible for small awards, diminishing the overall impact of the funds in encouraging students to go to college who otherwise wouldn’t have.” Italics mine. No wonder the general public thinks that higher ed has become completely unhinged; this kind of let-them-eat-community-college rant has become more or less mainstream and remains so even as the nation is gripped by a sort of populist outrage.