Boston Globe-Article About Merit Aid

standrews
Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:32:30 +0000

“So the need-based aid system penalizes kids for working and earning”

As you have described it, yes. That’s why I view need-based aid as socialistic. One of the consequences is that it kills motivation to get a job in the first place or penalizes the kid because he is now a “have” as opposed to a “have not”. OTOH, merit aid enhances motivation to do well academically or athletically or musicly, etc. There is the hope of reward, not punishment, for those efforts.

The problems with need-based aid seem to center around the difference between being poor and looking poor, or, if you prefer, being rich or looking rich. (I use these terms in a relative sense, not absolutes.) The assumption is that if you look rich, you are rich, and if you look poor, you are poor. Determination of EFC is based upon looks at a particular point in time, or points of time over a number of years. A kid who starts working at time0 to save money to go to school because he IS poor, LOOKS rich at time1, when a FAFSA is filed. If information is missing, e.g. deadbeat dad won’t participate, the analyzers of financial status can’t tell what you look like. With no looks to go on, they assume you are rich.

In need aid we are dealing with an imperfect system. Providing alternatives, such as merit aid, is preferable to fine tuning the need-based aid system to perfection, even if it were possible. Loans are another alternative. They really aren’t aid, just a payment plan. Access to loans is a form of assistance, but the loans them self are not.