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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:39AM   Printer-friendly

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

College Financial-Aid Loophole: Wealthy Parents Transfer Guardianship of Their Teens to Get Aid

Amid an intense national furor over the fairness of college admissions, the Education Department is looking into a tactic that has been used in some suburbs here, in which wealthy parents transfer legal guardianship of their college-bound children to relatives or friends so the teens can claim financial aid, say people familiar with the matter.

The strategy caught the department's attention amid a spate of guardianship transfers here. It means that only the children's earnings were considered in their financial-aid applications, not the family income or savings. That has led to awards of scholarships and access to federal financial aid designed for the poor, these people said.

Several universities in Illinois say they are looking into the practice, which is legal. "Our financial-aid resources are limited and the practice of wealthy parents transferring the guardianship of their children to qualify for need-based financial aid—or so-called opportunity hoarding—takes away resources from middle- and low-income students," said Andrew Borst, director of undergraduate enrollment at the University of Illinois. "This is legal, but we question the ethics."

Also At:
https://www.propublica.org/article/university-of-illinois-financial-aid-fafsa-parents-guardianship-children-students
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/7/29/20746376/u-of-i-parents-giving-up-custody-kids-get-need-based-college-financial-aid-university-illinois


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:46PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:46PM (#873201)

    But "college" as it now exists for everyone? That seems a ridiculously stupid thing to me -- delaying adulthood for four years when most young people could be actually bettering themselves.

    Ummm, "bettering" themselves is exactly what college is about. You're playing into the "only STEM is useful" trope. While we overly focus on a college degree as some necessary item for life success there is a lot of validity to it. Life isn't just about learning some economically useful skill.

    Your attitude is condescending and ignorant.

    "But just funneling more money and more students into the broken higher ed system seems to be a recipe for disaster"

    ^ that right there, opinionated ignorance backed by nothing more than the "millenials suck" type of attitude. The university system was working very well until the 2000s when tuition started jumping up every year by MASSIVE amounts which happened to coincide with new push for government backed student loans.

    This destructive devaluation of anything not STEM is unhealthy for society. There is more to life than being a cog in the economic machine, and as you pointed out most jobs make little use of higher ed skills. Maybe we should just go full 1984 and assign people to their greek letter group.

  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:19PM (#873288)

    Ummm, "bettering" themselves is exactly what college is about. You're playing into the "only STEM is useful" trope. While we overly focus on a college degree as some necessary item for life success there is a lot of validity to it. Life isn't just about learning some economically useful skill.

    Maybe that is what is was when a degree was either a BA or a BS, but now it is about collecting dollars while convincing teens to pigeonhole themselves in a specialty when they are far too young to really understand what they like and want to do. We end up with ridiculous majors like human resources or hospitality, where graduates learn no skills other than how to fuck up an established business. In the past, people "bettered" themselves in college by escaping the narrow little wedge of society they came from and learning that the whole world was not like what they grew up with, and more importantly, that diversity in the world is a good thing. Intense specialization can wait until grad school, when students are more mature and have an idea what they like to do and where they want to go.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:42PM (#873298)

      The nice part about college degrees is the almost always have general eduction requirements, and even then the degrees you mention are more in line with "real world skills". It is no more "intense specialization" than any other. People need to choose something to study, and plenty switch majors.

      I just can't get behind whatever rationale is going on to NOT support socialized education. Invest in your country's future, support universal healthcare and education.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:31AM (#873408)

    The focus on STEM has also shoveled a lot more waffling bullshit merchants into "real" STEM areas. There's an absolute glut of scientific studies with 23+ authors squirting out of every corner of every scientific field right now. It's a disaster for science!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:08PM (#873747)

    This destructive devaluation of anything not STEM is unhealthy for society. There is more to life than being a cog in the economic machine, and as you pointed out most jobs make little use of higher ed skills. Maybe we should just go full 1984 and assign people to their greek letter group.

    Ah we have another man who has been enlightened by his non STEM education. I suppose it taught you how to think or something like that.
    Plenty of people are going into non-stem degrees. Bamboozled by arguments like the one you've just made. So they can take on a life altering amount of debt with no change in income. Yeah they don't need to do that.

    Non-stem degrees are in no danger of dying and while they're subjects worth studying they've become refuge for people who shouldn't be in college in the first place so it looks bad on the people who actually want to be there. I blame type-anal helicopter parenting and an emphasis on holding a high GPA.

    Oh I'm getting C's sometimes? Well mother certainly won't be able to gloat to her friends about that. After the flute lessons, ballet, tennis, prep school, etc.... mother will only accept A's and will forgive B's in all her grace; but a C? No; I think I should switch to marketing. Employers like 4.0s right? That's what my parents and counselors say... they're fat old people I'm sure they know how the world works.

    And now their kid is working at someone's shady nonprofit. Making $16/hr to solicit donations for the next decade so their 100k student loan will be forgiven. I hear now people are doing it and even getting rejected. Ouch!

    TL;DR, Plenty of people are not going into STEM so this argument is dumb. Especially from people who constantly brag they were taught how to think

    https://www.economicmodeling.com/2017/09/01/stem-majors-accelerating-every-state-just-humanities-degrees-declining/ [economicmodeling.com]

    Sounds awful but a quick glance at the chart shows that humanities are barely declining.