Mon 24 Oct 2005
Want more slap-dash mockery from me on financial aid policy/politics? This is the post for you! US News reports (hat tip: Steve Sailer) that
The [568] group, named after a law that waives antitrust provisions to allow the members to meet, wants to lessen the confusing variation in offers by requiring aid officers to use the same method for determining need. Applying for aid “should not be like bargaining in a bazaar,” says Morton Owen Schapiro, president of Williams College in Massachusetts and a member of the group, who worries that the existing hodgepodge of policies tends to keep aid dollars from going to the neediest students. Critics fear the new approach will reduce competition.
D’uh! How many times do we have to go through this?
1) Maybe I am just drinking too deeply at the PC-infected waters of the College’s Diversity Report, but isn’t this usage of the word “bazaar” a little offensive? Is a bazaar a naturally an unpleasant place to shop? Are shop owners in a bazaar less fair or friendly to deal with? Is the universal and ideal shopping experience to be found the North Adams Walmart rather than those dirty, sleazy bazars in Istanbul or Tehran? Just asking!
2) Yes, I realize that Morty is using “bazaar” to mean a place without set prices, a place where bargaining occurs. Fine. But is there a single free market transaction with a price tag greater than $5,000 (much less $160,000) which does not involve bargaining? I can’t think of one.
3) Big thanks to Morty for wanting to save me and all the other idiot parents from all those “confusing variations!” Why, if Williams offers my daughter a different financial aid package than Amherst, I’ll be so flummoxed that even blogging may have to stop.
4) If collusion — whoops, I mean reducing the “existing hodgepodge of policies” — works for financial aid, think of all the other applications. Car shopping, for example, features all sorts of variations and much nasty bargaining. Perhaps the 568 Group could establish precisely what each family should have to pay for any given car. Come to think of it, buying a house was a big bother. We need a 568 Group for this as well.
Call me old fashioned, but I’ll take the “confusing variations” of a free market every time.
6 Responses to “ In A Bazaar ”
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March 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm[...] borrow or steal. If Williams had not done so, then hundreds of Ephs would be going elsewhere. Start here for previous [...]
October 24th, 2005 at 11:51 am
David: First we need to settle the spelling of bazaar - dammit! Having done that we need to determine whether one can be found in a Casbah. And then whether Pepe Le Moko may be hiding there. After all of which we can address the antitrust aspects of this matter, about which incidentally I don’t care!
October 24th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Perhaps it’s only fair to quote the rest of the paragraph that David left out:
“Critics fear the new approach will reduce competition. But colleges in the group respond that they can still package aid differently from one another (offering merit scholarships or a more favorable ratio of grants to loans, for instance). All, however, will use the same underlying need analysis.”
It’s not exactly killing the free market, now is it? I’m not so good at these sorts of things, but it seems there will still be bargaining; rather, the “blue-book” value (to keep the car analogy) of a student will become more or less standardized. I think that all the 568 group is doing is setting a fair way for determining financial need, not rock-bottom price. I believe that the college will still have control over the final figure they offer in terms of aid.
October 24th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
I’ve got a ‘96 with only a few thousand miles. It runs really well, is fast, and doesn’t consume much fuel. It is very sporty as well.
His name is John, he plays a mean game of soccer, reads quite profusely, and is an excellent math student. He is also quite artistic. He prefers to eat mostly hot dogs and chicken fingers and drinks milk by the gallon….which by the way is almost the same price as gasoline.
Morty, what will his blue book value be in 2014?
October 24th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
If he’s still in high school in 2014 (up for sale, that is), you probably won’t be able to get him off the lot at all, no matter how appealing he may have looked to Williams in 2005.
Point taken, though: blue book is probably not the greatest analogy. It’s not worth they’re discussing, after all, but need. However, it seems that under this new system it becomes more difficult to conflate the two (as I have admittedly done). There will be a standard formula for need, a clear base number on which colleges can either add more aid to or take some away from the entire package. What I meant by the original analogy was that there is a blue-book price and a sticker price: need and overall aid offer. Certainly there are other factors that go into providing financial aid and scholarship packages than just need, just as there is more that determines how much you’ll pay for a car than the blue-book price.
Didn’t mean to offend; hope that clears it up.
October 24th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
I never claimed that this was “killing the free market”. Indeed, in prior posts I have emphasized that, like the Common Application, a standardized on-line financial aid form might make life a bit easier for applicants.
But, just for fun, I can’t resist quoting Adam Smith again:
The world of 18th century Scotland is not that different from our own.
As the 568 group moves forward, what you will find is that they are certainly “standardizing” things but always in the direction of expecting more money from various sources. Morever, they could just as easily standardize things by all accepting one of the current standards. Even if you believe (plausibly) that the current standards could be improved, you have to wonder if the 568 process will make such an improvement and, even if it does, wonder if the costs are more than the benefits. It is, after all, tuition dollars that pay for all the meetings, travel, lawyers, lobbying, et. al. associated with the effort.
Go back to previous links and see the gibberish spouted by folks like Massa. People like him want more money to go from the pockets (or second mortages) of applicant families to those of the colleges. They see the 568 process as helpful to that end. They’re right.
(I wonder if the 568 group has to file federal financial forms of some type.)
In any event, I have ranted on this enough. I have little to add to what I have already written.