Of Course Wealth Buys College Access
I fail to see the purpose of a front-page article, “College Waiting Lists Can Favor the Well-Off” (May 20) that makes -- well, what point, exactly? Let’s see: After considerable budgets for financial aid are exhausted, a school may admit their last few applicants on the basis of who can pay tuition. This is front-page news, that money buys things?
The article makes private colleges look stingy in spite of the copious financial aid they hand out to deserving students. It makes people who can afford tuition look like unfeeling advantage-takers.
Showing a picture of a sweet-faced kid who may not get into his private college of choice, even though our state university system is eminently affordable and provides excellent opportunities for a first-rate education, and quoting his disappointment at being passed over at that particular school in favor of someone whose parents can pay full freight -- what exactly is The Times trying to achieve here? What’s next, an article -- replete with earnest, sorrowful faces -- lamenting the fact that not everyone can drive a Porsche?
Jim Houghton
Encino
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Colleges don’t have an unlimited supply of free money? Alert the media! Colleges spend what aid they have pursuing the most desirable “students of need” first? Stop the presses! Some kids can’t get into their college of first choice? Call out the National Guard! Families that spend a fortune to avoid public grade schools might not have enough money to afford private colleges? Filibuster at 11!!
For the record, my first son went through the public school system, applied to an elite private college equivalent to Reed, got wait-listed, sat out a year, reapplied, is now a thriving junior at same college. Mom and Dad are very good friends with “Aunt Sallie” (Sallie Mae).
For everyone who struggles with the idea that those who can afford to pay their own way are still able to enter a college when that college is no longer able to pay for those who can’t, I have one word: “Duh!”
Eric Hainline
Santa Ana
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A May 20 article informs Times readers that rich students on college waiting lists may have an advantage over the poor. You don’t say! Sophie Tucker said it more succinctly many years ago, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.”
Manuel H. Rodriguez
Burbank
