And some people who get merit scholarships might be poor too. Poor athletes, poor smarties, poor ROTC scholarship earners, poor marching band scholarship recipients. Wow, maybe there aren’t too many undeserving rich kids getting all this money.
The athletic scholarship system is even more screwed up.
Low-income and minority kids disproportionately populate the 2 revenue sports that make athletic departments and schools money (one of which is pretty violent and may lead to disabilities later in life) while the revenue that they bring in subsidizes scholarships in non-revenue sports like golf, tennis, and gymnastics where the student-athletes tend to come from a higher socioeconomic spectrum.
I wonder why he doesn’t talk about that instead.
It is an assumption that "low income and minority kids disproportionately populate the 2 revenue sports’ and that those sports support the country club sports. At most schools, there is no revenue from any sport, so football and basketball aren’t supporting anybody, even themselves. The better comparison might be how many athletes are also getting Pell grants compared to the general student population to show if more athletes are low income. Minority status doesn’t matter for sports, or are you saying that minorities are poor, and thus poor athletes?
I agree that many students from all financial backgrounds are helped by athletic aid. Schools must see the value of athletes too or the schools wouldn’t give athletic aid. It would be interesting to compare the financial aid packages of athletes at the Ivies and D3 schools with the rest of the student population at that school to see if the athletes were getting proportionately more.