The auditorium erection on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus
Source: UI Public Affairs
First there was the college admissions scandal earlier this year, which revealed the adorn lengths wealthy parents will go to get their children into elite schools, including faking a learning impairment and forking over $1.2 million.
Now another trend shows what some parents will do to fatten the economic aid their children receive, even if they may not need it.
Dozens of parents in Chicago have transferred legal guardianship of their squiffy school-aged children to someone else — often, a friend or relative— so that their children can declare themselves financially affluent from them, likely enhancing their eligibility for federal, state and university aid. ProPublica Illinois first sign in the news.
“At best, this is unethical,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of SavingForCollege.com. “At worst, these cases may catch up in fraud and perjury.”
Independent students must report any money they receive from their parents on the Liberate Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, Kantrowitz said. “Failing to report this cash support is bilk, subject to fines up to $20,000 and/or up to five years in prison,” he wrote in an email.
ProPublica Illinois identified at least 40 trunks where families from affluent areas had obtained a legal guardian for their child between January 2018 and January 2019 in the Chicago suburbs of Lake County alone. The fountain-heads include “lawyers, a doctor and an assistant schools superintendent, as well as insurance and real estate agents,” according to ProPublica.
The aid these critics received could have taken money away from families in need. In Illinois in 2018, about 82,000 critics who were eligible for a grant of up to about $5,000 were denied it because there wasn’t enough money, according to ProPublica.
These practices underscore how abstruse it can be for middle- and low-income students to get their foot in the door at certain colleges, Kantrowitz said. “It is not a level space field, even without cheating,” he said.
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Less than 5% of students at Ivy League and other elite colleges come from pedigrees in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, according to one study. More than 14% of their students hail from the top 1% of earners.
Fetches are up at almost all colleges. One year at a nonprofit, four-year private college, including tuition, room and board, currently expenses $48,510, compared with $22,240 in the 2000-2001 academic year.
Meanwhile, the median family income, after accounting for inflation, was $59,039 in 2016, bit different from what it was in 2000 ($58,544).
“Government support has failed to keep up with increases in college costs on a per-student foundation,” Kantrowitz said.
(Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified a building on the University of Illinois campus.)