Cornell, MIT Scale Back Aid Even as Endowments Rise

[Purveyor]

Cornell, MIT Scale Back Aid Even as Endowments Rise
By Janet Lorin - 2012-08-09T04:01:00Z

Cornell University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are scaling back financial assistance to students, adding to the burden of families already coping with climbing college costs.

Cornell, the Ivy League school based in Ithaca, New York, will force students whose families make more than $60,000 a year to seek other financing to pay for part of their studies starting in 2013. This fall, MIT is raising the amount low- income students contribute by 36 percent to $6,000 a year.

Students are being asked to pay more even as college endowments show double-digit growth as they recover from the 2008 financial crisis. With more students qualifying for aid, Cornell said its spending on financial support has jumped almost 20 percent a year on average since 2008, a pace it won’t sustain by drawing directly from the endowment. Cornell, which costs $60,000 a year, is good value for students’ money, even with the changes to financial-aid, said Barbara Knuth, vice provost and dean of the graduate school.

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Cornell’s endowment grew 20 percent to $5.35 billion in the year ended June 30, 2011, according to the school. Still, it’s down from a $6.1 billion peak in 2008.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-09/cornell-mit-scale-back-aid-even-as-endowments-rise.html

[madaboutharry]

1. $60,000 x 4 = $240,000 for a degree.

That is nuts.

[Purveyor]

2. I'm hoping someone can explain why a university needs a $5+ billion 'endowment fund'... eom

[uponit7771]

4. So they can continue paying 23million to football head coaches

[KamaAina]

7. Cornell and the other Ivies do not even offer athletic scholarships

let alone pay obscene salaries to coaches.

The schools that do that (except Stanford and Duke) don't even have those massive endowments.

[hfojvt]

8. perhaps even more puzzling for a STATE University

my alma mater University of Minnesota, with over $2 billion in its endowment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

And that is astounding, that the University of Michigan, for example, has an endowment of $157,000 PER STUDENT.

Well, I tried Dartmouth at random and stumbled upon this

"Dartmouth board members are accused of enriching own firms"

http://www.pionline.com/article/20120528/PRINTSUB/305289979

But also this

"Dartmouth endowment yields 18.4% in fiscal 2011."

http://now.dartmouth.edu/2011/09/dartmouth-endowment-yields-18-4-return-in-fiscal-2011/

Cee-ripes. I'd love to have even a 9.2% return on MY investments. If they are enriching their own firms, they are not doing too bad for the endowment either.

But they say THIS about their endowment.

"The Dartmouth endowment funds approximately 20 percent of the College’s annual operating budget. Programs supported by the endowment include Dartmouth’s need-blind financial aid and academic, research, athletic, recreational, and cultural programs."

But when they say 20% do they include the money spent on financial aid? I mean, 18% of their $3 billion endowment is $540 million which is $110,500 per student. Given that amount of money, I sorta wonder why they have to charge tuition.

I'd love to see more numbers. What do students spend? What does the University spend, and where do they spend it? What about other revenues?

[uponit7771]

3. Go two JC then 4 yr for degree, half the cost...screw these high dollar colloges

[hfojvt]

5. so Cornell is Ivy League

I did not know that. I considered going there way back in 1979. Had a meeting to talk about financial aid/scholarships, but that and Northwestern was one of the meetings I missed when our camper got knocked over by a t-storm in Minnesota.

Anyway, I think these big piles of money are interesting. I wonder what the total wealth is that is tied up in all these foundations and endowments.

"Harvard’s endowment was valued at $31.7 billion as of June 2011. Yale’s was $19.4 billion, and Stanford’s fund was $16.5 billion as of August 2011."

There's $67.6 billion from just three schools. I guess not THAT much wealth, but that is only three out of many, many such foundations.


Also, this is surprising "The average debt of MIT undergraduates in the class of 2012 was $20,794 and 41 percent of students borrowed, Hicks said."

That does not seem like very much debt for going to MIT. I think my niece has more than that from her first two years at Missouri-Springfield. Two years that she could have gotten for free at another school that she didn't want to go to.

[exboyfil]

6. I used the Stanford calculator

and found that all tuition would be covered by Stanford (a better deal than my daughter could get at the state school). If it was not for the higher room and board and travel costs from Iowa to California, it would be cheaper than going to Iowa. On the other hand my daughter as a High Schooll junior will have most of her freshman year in engineering done this year. She could easily graduate in three at Iowa (not so likely at Stanford because of its more restrictive standards on community college courses). The biggest question would be getting into Stanford.

[hfojvt]

9. it might be

I was a top student, but there are lots of top students. I was national merit commended, not a person with a merit scholarship, for example. I got accepted into Washington University, needed to in order to apply for a scholarship which I did not get. I got a daddy scholarship anyway, but still think it is kinda annoying. I think that if I was as good at football or basketball as I was at math, that I would have gotten a full scholarship. But colleges value basketball and football players more than they value mathematiicians.

I considered applying to Harvard just so I could get accepted. Did not want to go to Harvard (and dad probably would not have paid for it anyway). I thought that might be a cool memento. "Once upon a time, I was good enough to be accpeted into Harvard." But the application fee was probably $50 (in 1979 money!) so it did not really seem to be worth it.

But ultimately that Stanford degree is probably much more valuable. My own Minnesota and Nebraska degrees are not worth much, and I feel that they become worth even less the further you get away from Twintown and Omaha.

[exboyfil]

10. The alumni contacts

she would get with a Stanford degree is what gives me pause about going the state school route versus ponying up more money for Stanford (assuming she was accepted). She is thinking Electrical Engineering with Film Studies minor (she is interested in becoming a documentary film maker focusing on the camera and editing aspects). It might be better for her to go through the Iowa undergraduate program in three years, work a couple of years (hopefully for a technology company related to film production) while doing some film projects on the side, and then apply to the MFA Documentary Film Studies program at Stanford. We have discussed the options. She likes the idea of the Electrical Engineering degree because it is like a swiss army knife in getting jobs (nothing is assured but it is a heck of degree combined with her film studies skill set). Since many of her stories are going to be science and technology related, the EE degree can't hurt in that area (they know more relevant Physics than MEs do for example and the math skill set translates into learning any other technology readily). The journalist piece of film study will assist in a better understanding of social studies. She will be doing considerable writing in the film studies minor (she is already writing scripts for 10-15 minute documentaries). All in all I view it as a comprehensive liberal arts program, and Iowa is a pretty good school (but it is not Stanford).