Is it a fair program?

Just pondering as I hit the "Pay" button for the entire amount minus some merit scholarship amount for my sons next quarter tuition and fees.

No. It's social engineering and it's also something that can be heavily manipulated.

For private schools or scholarships so be it but public schools should focus on lowering costs for everyone. Some states do but Texas is more liberal than California in that regard.

Tuition is $4,500 per quarter and $10,500 including fees and food/lodging. It's not expensive.

Injustice in my mind is we are one of the few paying the full price. Most students at UC pay no tuition or only partial.

So I work harder to get ahead, end up paying more taxes to the state where the money goes to others meanwhile I pay full price.

Man... Where did I go wrong.

Will cross post in politics board

AggieDruggist89 said:

---

Tuition is $4,500 per quarter and $10,500 including fees and food/lodging. It's not expensive.

Injustice in my mind is we are one of the few paying the full price. Most students at UC pay no tuition or only partial.

So I work harder to get ahead, end up paying more taxes to the state where the money goes to others meanwhile I pay full price.

Man... Where did I go wrong.

Will cross post in politics board

---

My son's bill is about $13k per Semester and we get no in state benefits for his Summer Sea Term in Galveston. That's much more than Georgia, North Carolina or Florida which should be our comparison. Those states also have far more merit money and are generous with it.

At A&M it's almost entirely means based and under $75k is free, Texas is $100k. Very little merit money and extremely competitive. Thus rates are artificially high to subsidize others for means based aid. The folks who typically have paid the most into the system in taxes get the least. If you are a business owner or if you can do some creative accounting (there is an entire mini industry designed around gaming the FAFSA) you also pay less.

Just make it less expensive for everyone. A&M and Texas have the two largest endowments of any public schools and they get significant additional state funding. It's just not something they prioritize, same as how they don't prioritize admitting kids from large top notch suburban schools and instead want first generation from poor schools who they recruit and subsidize. This it's a socialist system.

Oh, we also have more programs for giving oos kids in state tuition than our competitors. California doesn't allow scholarships for any oos and it's hard to get from the 3 states I mentioned. Those states are focusing on benefitting their state taxpayers and thus keep more of their best students in state.

Another frustration I am encountering btw is the overwhelming majority of Outside scholarships are also Need Based. With most Top 50 schools now giving free tuition to people making less than $75k already that's really frustrating. If you are upper middle class you can't get scholarships at all from a lot of schools and you also don't qualify for most outside scholarships. They make it very hard to avoid paying full rates or close to it. Of course to someone who is truly wealthy they don't care but simply because a family makes $250k that they have gradually built up to doesn't mean they are sitting on $500k in a 529 to send a couple kids to school and essentially they are expecting you to have that.

It's really frustrating when you can see schools your kid could get into but you make too much money and too little money at the same time so your options are limited. It causes friction in many families as well because essentially it penalizes the kid for how much their parents make or how much their parents choose to contribute to college. No matter how much they try to come up with a FAFSA that addresses this it is simply impossible and it is incredibly intrusive. Just lower the costs for everyone and focus on merit for scholarships or go back to how many schools once were that made tuition free (it was actually part of the Rice Charter for instance that they never charge tuition but they just chose to ignore it and make it one of the most expensive schools in Texas a few decades ago.