Promise partly covered in spring

Good for them. At least they are trying after the state screwed us up big time. Many universities are making their students pay the whole $1,000 because they simply can’t cover it.

The state needs to get it together and give us what was promised. Shame on the Senate and the House for screwing students out of money that they were counting on. If they want to revive the state, they need a well-educated work force and these continued cuts to educational funding are simply unacceptable.

And the whining by mostly upper-middle class pampered college students continues. I’m sorry, losing your little scholarship is not the worst possible thing that can happen to a person. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs over this budget. Hmm, that seems slightly worse than your scholarship. A lot of our most vulnerable citizens are getting their health care slashed, so some of them with chronic illnesses are probably going to get worse or die. That also seems worse than scholarship loss. Especially considering that most of your parents are just going to sigh and write the bigger check, and the worst possible thing that can happen is that you’ll have to transfer somewhere cheaper. It sucks, but you won’t be turning tricks on MAC to survive. In the end, it’s not that bad.

Quit with the hyperbole, people.

not only am i missing the MI Promise, but the Michigan Competitive. that is $2,300 the state screwed me out of. MSU i just wish to thank you for atleast covering ~20% of what i am missing.

Tony, whiny upper class? Give me a break. I have one unemployed and one permanently disabled parent. Not only do I pay for my own college, I am also the only one working so I give THEM money. I was counting on that scholarship to help me out.

Don’t tell me about being uninsured, I already am. Don’t tell me about unemployment, I deal with it everyday. Don’t tell me about chronic illnesses, I have a mother with cancer (uninsured) and a father with chronic conditions from an accident where a DUI driver hit him.

Don’t pretend it’s whiny upper middle class kids that are affected. I have lived in/near poverty my whole life. Don’t you DARE tell me what students are and are not affected by this.

Dear Tony,

Quit whining

Dear Tony, it might be a good idea to assume that the only thing you know about a person commenting is no more than what is in the comment. With love and affection, your fans.

I didn’t mention anyone by name. However, if you take a snapshot of MSU students, most of them are of the upper middle class persuasion. That’s just demographics. Of course there will be some students who will actually be hurt by this, but the vast majority won’t be.

Didn’t Carly Simon write a song about you people?

Wow, Tony. Apparently you don’t quite understand what it’s like to be a student right now. I’m fortunte that my parents are both still workng, but many of my friends (even at the less expensive universities) are counting on whatever money they can get to attend college. Banks have tightened up on loans, and it’s extremely difficult to get any financial aid right now. For a student who is uninsured, unemployed for 3/4 of the year (unless they somehow manage to find a weekend job), every bit of money counts. And you must be looking at the wrong statistics, but every person I know that’s attending MSU is counting on financial aid to do so, not because their parents write them checks every week. You seem to have a very warped view of the modern college student. Perhaps a trip to a university would enlighten you?

My stats are from the Office Of Financial aid. How they’re less accurate than ‘All the people I know’ is beyond me, but it is an interesting theory.

And it’s not like I graduated in ’68. I got my B.S. in 2000. I just finished my doctorate a few years ago. You can say I’ve been around the university. I’m probably TA’ed a few of you young ones.

And I’m sorry, in general, you guys are not the Spartans of old. Sure, there’s a stand up kid every now and then, but most of you are spoiled, shallow, self-centered, and immature. I blame tuition increases and grade inflation, myself.

It’s not all your guy’s fault, though. The university has let you down. When I arrived here in ’95, tuition and room and board was about $8200/yr for a 15 meal double and 13 credits. The university created make work jobs so students didn’t have to struggle, and probably so they wouldn’t have free time to party constantly. We had Friday classes, and no one whined. Financial Aid wasn’t a joke. The Ag Pavilion was right in front of Anthony hall. And MSU students were mostly all kind and understanding to each other.

As for my trip to a university, I make one every day, since I work at one. I’ve seen it evolve over time, because I’ve been around East Lansing for fifteen years. Have you?

I’m actually not a Spartan. I’m a student from SVSU, and I saw this headline on iGoogle and was interested in seeing how MSU handled the Promise Scholarship situation. Although we’re the least expensive university in Michigan, there is still a lot of struggle for students to make ends meet. And it is incredibly disheartening to be promised $4000 your senior year of high school, only to have that retracted and you’re stuck with the bill. And I do apologize for jumping to conclusions in my previous post, but I still disagree with your opinion of the modern college student. I pride myself in being one of the “stand up” kids you described, and I still have more faith in my generation than you seem to have. I worked incredibly hard during high school and I received a full tuition scholarship. There are still other ends to meet, however, like room & board and books. Times have changed, but is it really the fault of the people who were still eating cheerios and watching cartoons while you were getting your bachelor’s degree? You said you entered MSU in ’95. A lot has changed since then. People my age are dealing with an economic crisis all the while trying to invest in higher education, with little to no help from the government. Not that I expect them to in the first place, but when something is promised, it is expected that it will be delivered. The job market is poor, and for many college students, the fear of not being able to pay off student loans and debts after graduation is very real. So naturally, any student who was promised this scholarship is going to get a little angry when it is cancelled. I’m sorry you have such a bitter opinion of my generation, and I hope you are able to interact with more of the “stand-up kids” in the future. We don’t party as hard as some do, so we tend to blend into the woodwork.

I wonder what this will mean for community colleges and if enrollment will increase as a result. I graduated from grad school at MSU this year, but I relied on the Promise for my first two years. Were I a high-school senior now, I think I’d be seriously considering doing the community college route. My parents didn’t write one check for college. They did let me live at home, though, so that cut my expenses in half. I still remember paying my first semester’s tuition with my savings and being so glad the Promise helped me out a little. Of course, the majority of the money saved went to the student bookstore and outrageous textbook prices, but that’s another story. I also remember that each and every one of my college semesters, financial aid wouldn’t even come close to covering all of my tuition.

Ah, well, looks like these kids nowadays can just supplement their debt with a little more credit card debt to offset the loss of the Promise.

But yeah, Tony sounds like an old-fashioned blowhard. The people to whom he’s referring must be the ones in frats and sororities. The great majority of people I knew at MSU were funding at least a third of their own education, with most having to do it all by themselves.

Hey Tony, theirs other places to cut besides the promise scholarship. Education is one of the most important things in our country because it’s our future. Why don’t the cut unemployment, many of the people collecting should’ve saved money while they had a job instead of living paycheck to paycheck.

I have two sons at MSU and this will hurt. I was laid off in 2004 and have worked for 1/3 the salary ever since. My kids deserve a college education and we’ll make sure they get it, with or without the “Promise”. It still hurts because we were counting on it.