Scholarships for Achievement, Not Need, Increase Rapidly

Los Angeles Times ^ | June 17, 2002 | STUART SILVERSTEIN

[liberallarry]

College scholarships, long directed at needy students, increasingly are being awarded based on achievement rather than financial hardship.

The result is a far greater rise in state and college grants to relatively affluent students than to students from poor and moderate income families, many higher education researchers say.

"We're to the point today that almost 25% of all of the state grant dollars to undergraduates are now awarded without any determination of financial need," up from 10% in 1990,...

[liberallarry]

Equality of opportunity or hereditary classes?

[fydelia]

Well, obviously it does not make sense to give any kind of scholarship to the children of the very rich, but I don't think that's what "affluent" means to the people who wring their hands over this sort of thing. You really have to be dirt poor to get any kind of grant, as opposed to loan. I grew up in California and I knew a lot of kids who ended up going to UC despite being admitted to elite private schools, because the financial aid powers that be assessed their families for ridiculous sums. The assumption is if you have any money in the bank at all, you have to sacrifice your retirement and the education of your younger children in order to send the child to school. The value of the family home is also taken into account, because they are supposed to take a second mortgage on it. And if your parents are divorced and remarried, the income of the stepparents are taken into account, regardless of how long they've been in the picture, what kind of relationship with them you have, or whether you even live with them.

Basically it is a system of milking the middle class parents of able children to subsidize feel-good charity for affirmative action cases. And the so-called beneficiaries are being hurt as well in the long run, because straight out grants are a drop in the bucket. Most of the financial aid package is loans, and people who have no real prospect of ever earning enough to pay them back are being lured into borrowing 40, 50, 60 thousand dollars for the benefit of the school. It is a good thing for aid to be based on ability, it keeps young people from being lured into debt out of all proportion to their objective earning power. Of course I think a society which requires its young people to mortgage their futures in order to get their foot on the first rung of the ladder, while elderly people who've had decades to save and plan are swimming in government benefits, has its priorities all out of whack, but that is a different topic.

[liberallarry]

All your criticisms seem right on to me.

The problem is to design a system which allows talented kids to advance regardless of the success or failure of their parents.

It's difficult because a)we are not all that good at measuring talent, and b)talent florishes or dies depending on opportunity and we all know the deficiencies of public schools in poor neighborhoods.

I don't know the answer but I went to school in the '50s and '60s when a good education was easily obtained - at least in California.

[FreedomPoster]

The problem is to design a system which allows talented kids to advance regardless of the success or failure of their parents.

As much as I dislike the idea of the state lottery (the government shouldn't be in the business of converting the people into marks), here in GA, the Hope Scholarship seems to have done that reasonably effectively. Maintain a "B" average, and the gov't pays your tuition. Lots of kids who otherwise wouldn't have been in college are there. SAT scores for entering freshmen at UGA have increased markedly, is one result, so there's the "allowing talented kids to advance" part you spoke of.