I can understand why they might do this. Many people who own a small business underpay themselves significantly and use the extra funds on the business to build up assets. This defers taxes and allows the funds to be reinvested without tax. They might even take out loans on those business assets. The same way the wealthy will pay themselves a tiny salary and just live off the asset value of their stock. Someone who owns their own business could also easily drop their salary significantly for the year prior to applying to college.

You wouldn't have to sell the business. You could convert it from an LLC to an INC. Yes it's a lot of work but it's a better alternative to selling it.

Isn't the entire point of these assessments to look at total assets, and not just annual income?

I dont think this was an oversight or mistake. I think the expectation was that yes, people should sell assets if they have them .

Heh, for my jurisdiction, to get gov financial aid for a 2nd degree, they expected me to withdraw from retirement savings to fund it, but no similar expectation if you had a locked-in defined contribution pension plan (lol I wish).

Nor would they expect you to take a line of credit against the equity in property if you owned any, but stocks are always a rich person luxury that you can sell!

Kinda cemented that we’re rewarding a failure to save and rewarding a failure to save in something liquid.

Why are such things in the US so complicated? Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone!

That's the only fair way. Also, a set of well educated people pays itself back later in the form of mostly income and added value taxes, which provides money to keep studying for cheap for the next generation.

Same problem for families with multiple kids of similar age - never saw discount for those. Also, no discount for the cost of living in a specific area…

Well, how big were the business assets?

Specifically, what percent of the business would have to be sold off? My reaction is very different for 5% versus 50%.

Had the same problem (with MIT among others). Somehow I heard farmland was treated a bit more generously (a recognition that you can't just sell the land to pay for college & remain a going concern). For a small biz with 4 employees, though, the math was impossible. Good thing Caltech was cheaper.

s1artibartfast below is saying that it seems intentional. But how can someone with a small business sell the assets, eliminating their own income in the process, and provide for the remaining children/themselves/etc? Sacrifice is one thing; killing the job you created is another and far too short-sighted.

>but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses.

That's a "happy accident". The college educated bureaucrats who joined hands with academia to create these programs were perfectly fine omitting the plumber's children. They sure weren't gonna do a huge amount of work to find away to avoid an edge case they were ok with.

On the flip side, it’s possible to sell a business for 7+ figures and then have little to no income in subsequent years in which case quite wealthy families would qualify for assistance.

Similarly, I wonder how they’d consider shares of a non public company. Probably a common situation for people on HN, that take a pay cut to work as early employees at a startup.

Isn't this another way of asking how they consider assets? Which never seems to be mentioned in these headlines about income qualifications.

This is not a step in the right direction.

Tuition for undergraduate studies should be affordable. Not for a small number of very rich universities that can afford it. But to all universities, as it is in most of the world.

I remember how the FAFSA was more complex than any tax return I've had to do as an adult (late 30s now).

It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.

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