Hockey Advisers

[css228]

...but now they basically do pay their athletes, which they accomplish by recruiting less-wealthy kids and juicing their financial aid packages.

While the purpose of the Ivy League is a cute bit of history, the current Ivy League is hardly full of big time athletes.

The sports in which the Ivy League is nationally-competitive in a non-trivial sense absolutely are full of big-time athletes. And those are the athletes in question... Cornell is still able to attract top talent to its hockey program because of the recent changes to the financial aid system: Schafer himself said so.

If the school is "juicing" the financial aid packages for athletes, it is an issue. If athletes are subject to the same formula as any other student, I have no idea why it is problematic that it leads the coaches to focus their efforts on "athletes that can/will attend the school under its current financial aid rules." That's how a smart person allocates resources. It doesn't turn the financial aid into an "athletic scholarship" any more than a similarly situated Hotelie who doesn't play sports could be said to have received an "hotel management scholarship."

The implication that Schafer makes is that he can get money that matches the packages offered by Princeton, Yale and Harvard.  I am not sure of the current dollar amount but in the news for the 2006-2007 academic year was a household income below $180,000 being the break point for essentially free tuition.

Unless Cornell has matched that for all students then it is juicing the packages.

Under HFAI, families that earn less than $60,000 per year pay no tuition to send students to Harvard. Students whose families earn up to $180,000 are typically asked to pay no more than 10 percent of the family's income.

2011 historical sucks

I thought that Cornell did match the other schools packages, for all students. Correct, anyone?

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

[Rosey]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

But really, my point is largely related to the fact that the financial aid system is a scam designed to extract the maximum amount of money from students and parents by doing very fine market segmentation. The matching of other Ivys' financial aid packages is just another term in the segmentation formula: offer a better package if there's more competition among our peer group for the student. So, regardless of the precise semantics employed in justifying (or rationalizing) the fairness of such a system, in effect this is a merit scholarship, whether applied to athletics or academics (though as indicated it's more likely to be an issue in athletics).

[Al DeFlorio]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

Lotta "mays" and "mights" in that premise.  Show us data.

[Weder]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

Lotta "mays" and "mights" in that premise.  Show us data.

The data would be in the individual schools' AI numbers, which they ain't sharing.

[Al DeFlorio]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

Lotta "mays" and "mights" in that premise.  Show us data.

The data would be in the individual schools' AI numbers, which they ain't sharing.

Hard to reach any conclusions without data, I'd say.

[Robb]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

Lotta "mays" and "mights" in that premise.  Show us data.

The data would be in the individual schools' AI numbers, which they ain't sharing.

Hard to reach any conclusions without data, I'd say.

Not at all.  Have you ever read a social science journal???  :-D

[ugarte]

Pretty certain they do. Doesn't matter if your an athlete or not, but it may come up more in athlete's cases because they might be a bit more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student

Ding! Ding! Ding! You're a winner! This is part of why I say it's a smokescreen: it looks equitable on paper, but in reality its application skews toward athletes.

But really, my point is largely related to the fact that the financial aid system is a scam designed to extract the maximum amount of money from students and parents by doing very fine market segmentation. The matching of other Ivys' financial aid packages is just another term in the segmentation formula: offer a better package if there's more competition among our peer group for the student. So, regardless of the precise semantics employed in justifying (or rationalizing) the fairness of such a system, in effect this is a merit scholarship, whether applied to athletics or academics (though as indicated it's more likely to be an issue in athletics).

I have read this over and over and, even with your antagonistic gloss, I can't figure out what your problem is. That people make decisions about things other than "merit"? That merit scholarships are bad? You've lost me.

I don't understand why "athletes" would be more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student. HYP have higher admissions standards than Cornell does. Anyone who gets into those schools, and gets their financial aid awards, is also likely to get into Cornell and be eligible for matching. I would not have been eligible for matching under those criteria but only because I wasn't an athlete OR a particularly good student.

[Rosey]

I have read this over and over and, even with your antagonistic gloss, I can't figure out what your problem is. That people make decisions about things other than "merit"? That merit scholarships are bad? You've lost me.

That the Ivy League schools' looking down their noses at other schools by supposedly not giving athletic merit scholarships is simply false. This ties into the original conversation through my unstated contention that to dislike what most of the NC$$ schools do (provide stingy renumeration) means that one must also dislike what the Ivy League does (provide stingier renumeration along with a dose of hypocrisy).

Getting back to the NC$$ in general: the NC$$ is a cartel formed to suppress the price of labor and marketing, plain and simple. For people who complain about the abuses of corporate monopolies and cartels, you are all awfully quiet on this point. Personally, I'd like to see athletes get paid relative to the value they bring to their schools. The notion that the NC$$'s purpose is to keep collegiate athletics "amateur" is true only in a sinister way.

Edit: BTW, to be clear, the NC$$ is very good at promoting the viewpoint that puts its behavior in the best possible light: "most of us will go pro in something other than sports", etc. It sounds so noble, keeping money out of athletics, right? Except that it doesn't: the same amount of money comes in either way, but under NC$$ rules it just stays with the institutions instead of being distributed to the athletes.

I don't understand why "athletes" would be more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student. HYP have higher admissions standards than Cornell does. Anyone who gets into those schools, and gets their financial aid awards, is also likely to get into Cornell and be eligible for matching. I would not have been eligible for matching under those criteria but only because I wasn't an athlete OR a particularly good student.

Exactly, thus putting you at a financial disadvantage to those students aid-wise because you could not have gotten into the schools with better default aid packages. Hence, a merit scholarship for the better students and athletes. I can't really get any clearer than this.

[Robb]

I have read this over and over and, even with your antagonistic gloss, I can't figure out what your problem is. That people make decisions about things other than "merit"? That merit scholarships are bad? You've lost me.

That the Ivy League schools' looking down their noses at other schools by supposedly not giving athletic merit scholarships is simply false. This ties into the original conversation through my unstated contention that to dislike what most of the NC$$ schools do (provide stingy renumeration) means that one must also dislike what the Ivy League does (provide stingier renumeration along with a dose of hypocrisy).

Getting back to the NC$$ in general: the NC$$ is a cartel formed to suppress the price of labor and marketing, plain and simple. For people who complain about the abuses of corporate monopolies and cartels, you are all awfully quiet on this point. Personally, I'd like to see athletes get paid relative to the value they bring to their schools. The notion that the NC$$'s purpose is to keep collegiate athletics "amateur" is true only in a sinister way.

I don't understand why "athletes" would be more likely to get an offer from HYP than your average student. HYP have higher admissions standards than Cornell does. Anyone who gets into those schools, and gets their financial aid awards, is also likely to get into Cornell and be eligible for matching. I would not have been eligible for matching under those criteria but only because I wasn't an athlete OR a particularly good student.

Exactly, thus putting you at a financial disadvantage to those students aid-wise because you could not have gotten into the schools with better default aid packages. Hence, a merit scholarship for the better students and athletes. I can't really get any clearer than this.

So it seems that your biggest beef is with Cornell's matching policy (which disproportionately rewards kids with better academic credentials).  I can see that argument.  But why are you throwing the Ivy League as a whole under the bus?  How are HYP disproportionately rewarding their better students (or better athletes) compared to their worse ones?

[Rosey]

So it seems that your biggest beef is with Cornell's matching policy (which disproportionately rewards kids with better academic credentials).  I can see that argument.  But why are you throwing the Ivy League as a whole under the bus?  How are HYP disproportionately rewarding their better students (or better athletes) compared to their worse ones?

My objection is many-faceted. Relative to the Ivy League (and similar schools), my problem is with the financial aid system that answers the question "How much does it cost?" with "How much you got?"

Basically, I think higher education's financial model is fundamentally broken, but I don't really want to write a treatise in a thread: maybe at some point I'll explain it in a blog post and link it here.

[Robb]

Basically, I think higher education's financial model is fundamentally broken, but I don't really want to write a treatise in a thread: maybe at some point I'll explain it in a blog post and link it here.

Sounds good - I would be curious to read it.  The current state of things seems pretty bad, but better than any alternative that *I* can come up with, so I would like to see what you've pondered up.  

Fundamentally, I think that a huge number of people believe that the benefits of education are crystal clear, so there is naturally going to be a high demand for the "product," which naturally raises the price.  As prices go up, the best educations would end up being reserved only for those already born into privilege, which does not seem desirable if society is to remain vibrant with good possibilities for social mobility.  To avoid such stagnation, either the poorer kids need to be subsidized in some way (bad, the situation we have now) or the price of education needs to be artificially statutorily capped (worse).

What else ya got?

[ugarte]

Getting back to the NC$$ in general: the NC$$ is a cartel formed to suppress the price of labor and marketing, plain and simple. For people who complain about the abuses of corporate monopolies and cartels, you are all awfully quiet on this point.

A-fucking-hem.

I would not have been eligible for matching under those criteria but only because I wasn't an athlete OR a particularly good student.

Exactly, thus putting you at a financial disadvantage to those students aid-wise because you could not have gotten into the schools with better default aid packages. Hence, a merit scholarship for the better students and athletes. I can't really get any clearer than this.

I've always understood this aspect of your point. I don't have any problem with Cornell doing this, though. If Cornell can boost the "paper merit" of the overall student pool by matching HYP, I'm fine with that even though it would have been at my expense had the policy been in place in the 90's.

[Rosey]

Getting back to the NC$$ in general: the NC$$ is a cartel formed to suppress the price of labor and marketing, plain and simple. For people who complain about the abuses of corporate monopolies and cartels, you are all awfully quiet on this point.

A-fucking-hem.

Ok, I should have said "most". :-)

I've always understood this aspect of your point. I don't have any problem with Cornell doing this, though. If Cornell can boost the "paper merit" of the overall student pool by matching HYP, I'm fine with that even though it would have been at my expense had the policy been in place in the 90's.

That I don't have a particular problem with merit scholarships is an obvious corollary to what I've been saying (all other things being equal, of course), but they should call it what it is: trying to maintain this holier-than-thou "we don't provide *scholarships*, my god, only those plebian schools do that!"¹ posture in the face of overwhelming fact is laughable.


¹Make sure you say this with your best George Plimpton impression.

[ftyuv]

tl;dr on most of this, but it's always bothered me when people write "NCAA" as "NC$$." Firstly, I find that sort of name-calling puerile and distracting from any substantive argument that may also be there; but more importantly, "$" is the substitution for "S", not "A." I keep reading it in my head as "N-C-S-S." Where does the "$" come from, the fact that the NCAA makes money and two of its letters are doubled up? That makes as much sense as "G$$gle" or "$$$$$$" (that's "Disney," in case you struggled to read it).

[Rosey]

Basically, I think higher education's financial model is fundamentally broken, but I don't really want to write a treatise in a thread: maybe at some point I'll explain it in a blog post and link it here.

Sounds good - I would be curious to read it.  The current state of things seems pretty bad, but better than any alternative that *I* can come up with, so I would like to see what you've pondered up.  

Fundamentally, I think that a huge number of people believe that the benefits of education are crystal clear, so there is naturally going to be a high demand for the "product," which naturally raises the price.  As prices go up, the best educations would end up being reserved only for those already born into privilege, which does not seem desirable if society is to remain vibrant with good possibilities for social mobility.  To avoid such stagnation, either the poorer kids need to be subsidized in some way (bad, the situation we have now) or the price of education needs to be artificially statutorily capped (worse).

What else ya got?

I didn't say I had a solution. I can just point out where it's broken. Seriously, what do you think I am, an engineer? ;-)

I'll try a really short version. The problem fundamentally is one of supply of funds, not of demand for education or supply of such. Demand for higher education is something like demand for health care: it rises almost inexhaustibly with the dollars available to pay for it. Supply similarly seems not to be a problem: many parents seem happy to drop $40G/year on no-name private schools. The problem is the easy money. What government has been doing the past 30 years by providing so much money to higher ed in the form of aid grants, low interest guaranteed loans, research dollars, matching funds, new campuses, etc. is to concentrate price inflation in that sector: only a fool would refuse money offered with few or no strings attached, so the schools have been saying, "Shit, gotta find more things to do with all this money coming in!" Colleges buy new things—fancy new buildings, high-tech lecture halls, dorms, attractions, labs, superstar researchers, you name it—with all this easy money, forcing costs up, and therefore prices. This, my friends, is how a bubble behaves.

Like in any other bubble, the effect of this has been to create massive misallocations of capital within individual schools and in all of higher education in the aggregate. In effect, the availability of easy money has driven the increases in price through increased costs moreso than the availability of money has responded to increases in those prices, though there is certainly a cyclical effect here as legislators respond to cries of "college costs too much!" with even more easy money.

This is going to fail at some point. It's not clear when or how, but I have no doubt that the college bubble is in the process of bursting, though it won't fail in quite the same way as a normal asset bubble.

I actually wrote many posts on this very topic (under my other handle "squarooticus") on a thread on my own message forum a few weeks back. Please feel free to peruse and/or respond if you're interested.

http://pmpub.krose.org/forum?action=view&forum_id=2&message_id=442286