Sorry, I made 2 separate points and didn't delineate them clearly.
1) The view that the value given by over charging the rich students should be based on the number of students' tuition they eliminate is not fairly representing the situation, and understates the impact of having, say, a quarter of the student body paying significantly more than the "true" price. If the school spends say 20k/student, they charge some students 60k and others 10k, then each rich student has subsidized 4 poorer students. If a parent donates a large sum to get their kid into the school, that number is likely much greater.
2) Expensive schools using their high tuition offset by discretionarily providing merit (or need chosen by merit) based aide as a filter to distill the student body to only the high-performing, rich, or both is the main value proposition of expensive schools. Every pairing both within and between those two groups are valuable to the students, relative to say an acquaintance with an economically disadvantaged mediocre student. It subtly turns the universal experience of making new friends at university into a massive opportunity for networking, which many students don't even realize while they're engaging in it. It's not egalitarian, but it is extremely valuable to its beneficiaries.
> If the school spends say 20k/student, they charge some students 60k and others 10k, then each rich student has subsidized 4 poorer students. If a parent donates a large sum to get their kid into the school, that number is likely much greater.
My point is that you are misrepresenting the scale of the figures. I suspect the figures are more like $50k fees, and $100k costs? Given those figures as assumptions, rich kids need to pay way way more, and the fees paid by poorer students matters less. Otherwise you just end up with a school with mostly rich kids. I go into my assumptions for the figures in the other post I linked to.
> Expensive schools using their high tuition
Undergrad tuition fees only makes up something like 13% of Harvard income, and some of that is paid for by “poorer” students. I think your argument hinges upon tuition income being the most significant income to the school. Remove 13% of costs (crazy admin staff) and Harvard doesn’t need any tuition income from rich kids any more for undergraduates.
Google result shows “Harvard's 2019 class [snip] a massive 82 percent of those scholars are economically advantaged” i.e. rich kids are obviously not subsidising poor kids.
I am merely trying to point out that you are making deep assumptions, annd your anssumptions appear to be false, although admittedly I have only done some superficial googling.
I presume Harvard is a finishing school, for networking and status signalling. Especially given its 98% pass rate!
> massive opportunity for networking
I would hope that poorer students manage to network into the rich kid networks (I totally agree we should be realistic about how the world works, regardless of how “unfair” it may be). Whether poor students can effectively network is another question. I have certainly seen articles from poor kids explaining how difficult it is to break into wealthy cliques e.g. can’t pony up cash to join sporting events or outings, and don’t understand the social queues.
I admit I don’t really know much about the topic, since I went to a middle class school in a country on the edge of the world, and I have never spent time with wealthy scions. I am relatively wealthy compared with my friends (excluding the friends that I made my wealth with). Note: I’m using undergraduate and graduate in the UK meaning, not the US meaning, which I don’t grok.
1) The view that the value given by over charging the rich students should be based on the number of students' tuition they eliminate is not fairly representing the situation, and understates the impact of having, say, a quarter of the student body paying significantly more than the "true" price. If the school spends say 20k/student, they charge some students 60k and others 10k, then each rich student has subsidized 4 poorer students. If a parent donates a large sum to get their kid into the school, that number is likely much greater.
2) Expensive schools using their high tuition offset by discretionarily providing merit (or need chosen by merit) based aide as a filter to distill the student body to only the high-performing, rich, or both is the main value proposition of expensive schools. Every pairing both within and between those two groups are valuable to the students, relative to say an acquaintance with an economically disadvantaged mediocre student. It subtly turns the universal experience of making new friends at university into a massive opportunity for networking, which many students don't even realize while they're engaging in it. It's not egalitarian, but it is extremely valuable to its beneficiaries.