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Joined: Feb 2011
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There's no question that a significant portion of the middle-class is in danger of being squeezed out of the college track altogether.
On the other hand, I am not so sure that the "pampered, primped, and hothoused (not to mention "whipped") children of Tiger Parents" as you have described above would necessarily bother applying for many of these small scholarships.
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In response to this there are a few colleges that are "flattening" their fee structure, and officially lowering tuition. Particularly the one my daughter is attending.
My DD was "awarded" a scholarship to attend with her acceptance package as was probably virtually everyone that they wanted to attend. This wasn't really receiving any money as much as a discount on tuition. It's a bit frustrating that is labeled as awards and aids, because you never see any money.
The school decided last year to help their marketing to have one lower fee structure and in the long run eliminate all such merit based scholarships. Quite a surprise to get a letter last year to hear the tuition was going down by 20%. Not surprisingly my daughter scholarship has been eliminated and the new cost for this year is only very slightly less that what we were paying last year. ($800 or so.) This is supposedly a marketing decision on their part, trying to attract stronger students with a simpler lower tuition costs. Supposedly the school isn't taking in any less money this way. Just getting rid of the somewhat confusing awarding of scholarships. Hurray for one institution that is opting out of this fake scholarship craze and thereby saving students money.
Last edited by Quantum2003; 08/05/14 07:00 PM.
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It's a national program named AVID that is implemented by individual districts. I really don't have any information to share as it isn't a program that would apply to my kids or any kids on this forum for that matter.
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I'd like to see more merit aid, with for example National Merit scholarships being larger than $2500 http://www.nationalmerit.org/faq_scholarship.php . But that's not politically correct, because merit as defined by grades and especially test scores is positively correlated with SES. Too much of it goes to students who don't "need" it, according to a FAFSA calculation or something similar. Things must have changed. I seem to recall that at least some National Merit Scholars used to get more substantial awards. They still do-- it's often institution specific $$ on TOP of what NMSC provides.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Exactly! As a practical matter (timing, marketing, etc), it makes sense for the district to include all awards. That is why I mentioned that some graduates were probably getting six figures while many graduates were getting zero to average out to about $20,000 per graduate.
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Some of those parents work doing manicures and pedicures. They will spend the money on math programs but do without so their kids accel and don't have to do the same. It is all about priorities with immigrants. ITA. That has been my experience as well.
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$2000 a year isn't a lot. Let see I take my son to music lessons ($32 a pop) and Aikido (cheep at $80 per month -- he attends ~2 twice a week). And that adds up quickly. And that is over the $2K a year even saying he doesn't goes to music lesson every week. And that doesn't include summer camps, or the amount I donate to the schools.
And he doesn't do a lot of activites compared to a lot of kids I know. A lot of kids do a lot more, or do a lot more expensive things. Yes, I know a lot of parents can't afford even that. ITA. Clearly many parents can't spare $2,000 on extracurriculars for their kids. However, each instrumental music lesson costs between $30 to $60, which with weekly lessons would total $1,560 to $3,120 for one instrument for a single child each year. Arguably, the kids who get music lessons are privileged but I would also say that it is a fairly typical middle-class expenditure as well. Are there any teens on this board with note-worthy musical competence/achievement whose parents haven't spent thousands on music lessons? Arguably, this is possible if the parents happen to have the expertise themselves but that would still be privilege although in a different form. I am not an expert but I have saved quite a bit of money teaching my kids instrumental music at the earlier stages. As for math, I haven't spent more than a couple of hundred dollars total for my DS11 and DD11 combined and that was for a few AOPS textbooks and a couple of months of ALEKS subscriptions. There have been many instances in the past when other parents have demonstrated shock upon hearing that my kids did not have another music teacher or have never enrolled in Kumon or other math tutoring centers, etc. However, I am the first to admit that my kids are privileged so therefore would fall under the "pampered, primed" category as discussed by other posters although I am not sure that I can claim "hot-housed" since it's unnecessary as my kids tend auto-didactic so I will have to stick with the more accurate "privileged" terminology. Anyhow, that was a convoluted way of pointing out that it may not be a question of outside expenditures but parental expertise and time commitment go a long way. Are the kids less privileged just because the checkbook is unnecessary in some instances?
Last edited by Quantum2003; 08/06/14 10:47 AM.
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The claim is that hard work is resulting in advantages to the kids. My counterpoint is that parental ability to pay has a lot to do with it (hence, pampering/primping/hothousing). These ideas can be reconciled. Some affluent parents pay people to make their children work harder than they otherwise would, as occurs when I send a child to a math camp or afterschool program. It's strange to call it "pampering". Does anyone say that the Williams sisters became great tennis players because their father "pampered" them from an early age? I also don't see any real contradiction either. Parental ability to pay (and I would add parental ability to provide tutoring or otherwise impart knowledge) is one component that results in advantages to these kids but their own hard work is also a necessary component.
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I also don't see any real contradiction either. Parental ability to pay (and I would add parental ability to provide tutoring or otherwise impart knowledge) is one component that results in advantages to these kids but their own hard work is also a necessary component. I believe that HowlerKarma's original point was that the high level of what she called pampering/primping/houthousing is a major contributing factor to increasing the costs of college for kids who don't have the benefits that the upper middle class does. HowlerKarma, correct me if I'm wrong. The un-primped kids have to compete with the resources of the parents of the upper middle class, and they simply can't succeed in that competition, regardless of how capable they may actually be. The wealthier kids need the merit scholarships the LEAST yet are at a significant advantage in getting them precisely because of parental resources. This leaves the middle class kids with LOANS. This is about growing inequality folks, not internal drive.
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I will have to stick with the more accurate "privileged" terminology. I don't agree with how the word "privileged" is used nowadays, for reasons explained by economist David Henderson below. Step #1 in the process of discounting the achievements of my children and therefore justifying discrimination against them and resentment towards them and me is to label them "privileged". The Real Meaning of Privileged “They live in an expensive mansion, fly first-class to foreign countries, and eat at the finest restaurants. They send their kids to private schools. They’re so privileged.” How often have you heard some variant of the lines above? I’d bet it’s a lot. Yet, typically, the word “privileged” is inaccurate. We certainly all know or know of people who have a great deal of wealth and who spend it the way the people in the quoted lines do. But are these people privileged? Not necessarily. They’re obviously wealthy, but that’s not the same as being privileged. Privilege, instead, has to do with receiving special treatment, typically from government, because of one’s special legal status.
Friedrich Hayek points this out in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. According to Hayek, the right to own land was at one time reserved for the nobility. That was privilege. But the term, he writes, came to apply to anyone who owned property, even though virtually every adult now has the right to own property. We see something similar today. Rich people are called “privileged” even if they earned their wealth without political pull. Those who are poor, on the other hand, are called “underprivileged,” even if their being poor has nothing to do with having less than the average amount of privilege.
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