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    Carey wrote a book "The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere" (2015).

    Financial Games Colleges Play
    Their aid-award letters often confuse students with jargon or deceptive claims of zero ‘net cost.’
    By Kevin Carey
    Wall Street Journal
    June 13, 2018

    Quote
    Each school can create its own format for award letters, since there is no mandatory standard. In 2012 the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created a recommended version, but most colleges don’t use it. Imagine trying to compare boxes of macaroni at the supermarket if more than half the manufacturers designed their own nutrition labels.

    Take the letters in the study that included Pell grants. Of the 515 colleges that awarded them via nonstandard letters, more than a third provided no information about how much attending school would cost. The letters highlighted grants and scholarships as a way of convincing students to enroll, but without listing tuition or explaining how much money students would owe.

    Temple University sent one low-income student a letter saying it was pleased to offer a combination of grants and loans totaling $25,909 for freshman year. The letter failed to mention that Temple costs $33,048 a year to attend, including tuition, room, board and living expenses. A student could easily enroll, show up in the fall, and only then figure out the $7,000 shortfall.

    The letters that did disclose costs were inconsistent. Some listed only tuition. Others included room and board. Others added books and estimated living expenses. The recommended letter includes all of the above, providing a total “cost of attendance.”

    Seventy percent of colleges with nonstandard award letters created further confusion by lumping together grants and loans, as if both were freebies. Northern Arizona University sent one low-income student an award letter that said “Total Financial Aid Offer: $30,890.” This amount was also the annual cost of attending, so the letter subtracted one from the other and concluded: “Total Unmet Need: $0.”

    That sounds a like a free ride, but $25,075 of the aid came from loans—mostly federal debt that the student’s parents would have to take out, contingent on a credit check, at 6.31% interest plus an origination fee. The University of Arizona did something similar. It told a student the cost of attendance was $48,200 a year, then subtracted $5,815 in grants, $5,500 in work-study opportunities, and $36,885 in loans. “Net Costs After All Aid” were “$0.00.”

    Talk about deceptive. Say you buy a car with a $25,000 sticker price. The dealer gives you a $2,000 manufacturer’s rebate and a loan for the rest. Was the “net cost” $0.00? The recommended award letter solves this problem. It subtracts any grants and scholarships from the cost of attendance to calculate the “net cost.” Only then does it add in loans.

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    I get it. Thank you for raising awareness that these letters can present apples-and-oranges comparisons.

    However, these letters are being sent to people who were accepted to college; people who are graduating high school, supposedly college and career ready. People who may be expected to gather and understand data and perform simple math.

    If given the choice between having a required format, enforceable by law, or having students "do the math" to calculate the bottom line and draw out their budget, I would prefer to NOT have another law.

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    I, too, get that it would be nice if all parties in every transaction were completely transparent about things, but total cost of attendance, tuition, room, board, fees, etc. are only a google search away. If you haven't checked into those before applying, you just aren't trying hard enough. And you certainly should be investigating costs after acceptances and aid awards roll in.

    Oh, and you can play the financial games too - even with a school that says they don't negotiate financial aid. For us the college search came down to the final 2 schools, The Prestigious Institute (TPI) and Better Fit College (BFC).
    TPI was offering a slightly better aid package, so DD expressed to BFC that she likes them, but going to TPI would let her graduate with less debt. BFC, after reviewing TPI's aid package, upped DD's award. I suppose it technically wasn't a negotiation, but it sure felt kind of like one.

    Best of luck,
    --S.F.


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    Originally Posted by SFrog
    Oh, and you can play the financial games too - even with a school that says they don't negotiate financial aid. For us the college search came down to the final 2 schools, The Prestigious Institute (TPI) and Better Fit College (BFC).
    TPI was offering a slightly better aid package, so DD expressed to BFC that she likes them, but going to TPI would let her graduate with less debt. BFC, after reviewing TPI's aid package, upped DD's award. I suppose it technically wasn't a negotiation, but it sure felt kind of like one.

    Best of luck,
    --S.F.

    We had a similar experience. We went back to smaller private school with better fit versus big state school offering large NM scholarship. We said we know that you can't match the price but can you do better. They came back with a substantial scholarship that made it possible for us to say "yes."

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    We had similar negotiating experiences when it came to what credits the college would transfer. Originally they said, "Oh we'll take care of transferring credits after the student is accepted and completes orientation."....uh, no, no you won't, we'll take care of which credits will transfer BEFORE all that happens or we'll be moving along. I've seen this game played before. When it was revealed to us how few credits one college would let transfer as opposed to the other (both state colleges) the choice was a year's difference of college tuition and lost wages of work.


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