Posts: 5,012
Threads: 106
Joined: Feb 2014
The two items listed are important items to keep in consideration in thinking about college costs broadly, but there is another aspect to remember while patting ourselves on the back for our favorite school's financial aid policies.
Both the average debt burden and the expected return for students from families who make less than $65k per year are colored by the relatively small number of students at Stanford (and other top private schools)* whose families make less than $65k per year.
Good financial assistance for students from lower income families is great, but it doesn't help that many kids if few get in. Similarly, large debt burdens are mostly from students who do not have family resources and family support in paying for college - and that is a large factor in which schools have graduates who on average have large average debt loads.
* On the Common Data Set, schools report number of Pell Grant recipients and subsidized Stafford Loan recipients - which is not the same thing as income under $65k but related. For the latest reporting period, Stanford had 18.5% of students with that federal aid. For comparison, at Berkeley the same class had 36.4%. UC Riverside 70%. Harvard 15.3%.