When I filled out my college applications many years ago I was really peeved when they asked me my parents income. My parents were making a decent amount of money but with a mortgage and another child they weren’t exactly rolling around in extra cash. Although I did qualify for some aid there were a lot of programs I was cut off from because my parents made to much money.
Still, I see nothing wrong with scholarships offered to those who excel in grades and those that simply exist for those in need. Heck, they have scholarships for silly things like being of a certain ancestry or winning a beauty pageant.
I do too, but my point was that this might not be what happens. A student who gets into N institutions might wind up going to the one which he can or his family can afford the most, so by only giving need-based scholarships a college might miss out on that population. Reich was talking about the percentage of scholarships in both categories, not admissions decisions. I’m not sure there is a lot of dissent about the advisability of doing admissions in a needs-blind basis.
No one is implying that. Need is not related to merit in any way - and there are mechanisms for giving a bit of a boost to smart candidates who might have lower test scores due to circumstances. Admitting the top X% of the class at each high school is one.
But a needs based scholarship is by definition needs based only. Anyone who has gotten in has enough merit to be in the school, so that’s the minimum standard. The merit scholarship is to increase the chances that certain students the school really wants attend there. My daughters offers are, I’m sure, somewhat related to her being accepted to the honors programs of these schools, and perhaps somewhat related to her being a California student at East Coast state schools.
I hate, hate, hate agreeing with Bricker and Manhattan, but this is exactly a free market. Trash the merit scholarships, and your student body will be made of the rich and those getting good needs based scholarships. Trash the needs scholarships and you’ll lose out on good students (but not the very best) who would not be able to attend without them. The balance gets set by the market. Yay, market!
And in support of even svens post, I went to a talk by a couple who wrote a book on scholarships. They both went to Harvard, and spend almost full time applying for them (all merit) before and after admission. Even they didn’t get a full ride. But every few thousand bucks helps, and some merit ones are multi-thousands a year, nothing to sneeze at.
Anyways, perhaps I went a little overboard on my post - thisis a topic I tend to rant and rave about - as I am sure one could understand. However, the impact of all types of scholarships is not to be underestimated. The amount my husband received in scholarships exceeded the amount he received in loans. His junior year he got a rather fat scholarship that was only good for that one year but that helped immensely. He also got another few thousand from the Alumni Association that was renewable in his senior year. Both were need/merit hybrids; that is, the first criteria was that you had to have demonstrated financial need (as per the FAFSA information), and then have to have merit above the other applicants that also met the need requirements - which is a pretty good system. My application for these same scholarships was rejected because of no “demonstrated financial need” (as it said in my scholarship rejection letters - but if I had received either it still would not have helped due to my residency problems - but I digress). His senior year however he received another few thousand that was strictly merit-based (amongst other applicants that were working on their upper-level major requirements - you had to stand above all these). I don’t think anyone would argue that all scholarships should be either one or the other, but I have to agree with Voyager on this one - taking away merit scholarships will basically rob the middle class of a college education.
I guess what I am trying to say basically, is that more merit-based scholarships should be more easily available. What is on paper to the school and government can be very very different from what the reality is. You can only quantify real life so much; real life does not always fit into rules, numbers and formulae - especially for the middle-class (which is pretty much what I was trying to demonstrate with my first post but I apologize for tangents).
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And if anyone ever wants to discuss the intricacies of the UC system residency requirements, I will be happy to expound upon it at length. I am quite well versed in it now, and in fact have taken my experience as a learning one and will be offering my knowledge in the area to other students at my JC.
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Both kinds of scholarships are important, but if I were to endow a scholarship for students entering my alma mater, I’d want the money going to the needier students. As my poorer friends and I passed through college, it was easy to see all of the advantages that richer kids had over us, despite the fact that we all had access to the same education:
–Poorer kids have to work when they should be studying. I work-studied my way through college just to have money for the basics: food, trips home, books, thrift-shop clothing, and rent (in the summertime). All of the money my parents could spend on me went to the school. On the other hand, many of my friends had credit cards that got paid off by the elders. No need to spend 15 hours pushing papers in the alumni office each week, more time to get the readings done, cultivate one-on-one relationships with professors, and work ahead on term papers. Better grades!
–Poorer kids have to spend summers working too. Cool internships? Yeah, right! My grades weren’t stellar (see above, and consider the fact that UChicago prides itself on having very low incidence of grade inflation), I needed real money, and if I wanted to go anywhere other outside Chicago, I’d have had to pay for the move (expensive!). No time for volunteer work or low-paying “great experiences” when you’re paying your own bills on a high school graduate’s wages.
–Poorer kids will graduate with much more debt. We have the same degrees as the richer kids, but we have to take ANY JOB we can get, right out of the box. Student loans aren’t just going away. And our resumes aren’t padded with those cushy internships or references from Nobel Laureates. We were busy stuffing envelopes for the Alumni Ball.
My point is–there are many “invisible” costs of college for needy students. The “expected parent contribution” is laughable, and that plus the aid package only covers the “visible” costs of college. The needy kids really do need all they can get.
