<p>VossRon defined his ‘middle-class’ as families than feel obliged to work for income. I think I know one family that does not fit that description – but they may disagree.</p>
<p>"personally I think the merit system creates more losers than a pure need-based system because of the systemic inefficiency of the system. "</p>
<p>Inefficiency in doing <em>what</em>, exactly ?</p>
<p>Hamilton’s babble
cracks me up. I may be able to afford to pay Hamilton twice their list price; good luck trying to convince me to pay it.</p>
<p>That is the problem Hamilton is going to face and the reason that schools like Hamilton often do have merit awards. Folks may well be able to pay Hamilton and such schools twice their list price, maybe even more, but they may not think it is worth it. Especially if assets and income are tied up in other things like other kids’ educational expenses, a certain standard of living for the rest of the family, retirement accounts to ensure a certain standard of living in one’s old age. This is where the merit award can come into play.</p>
<p>Hamilton must have done an analysis that showed that they can do this. Perhaps there are not enough takers for their merit awards. Those offered that money tended to perhaps reject it and go elsewhere to a degree that it is not worth setting those funds aside each year. The yield from financial aid may be higher , enough so that it is worht making this switch. We’ll see if they can maintain this stance.</p>
<p>^^ fair reasoning, and quite an indictment of Hamilton as deciding to cater to the mediocre. Not a bad strategy when most peer schools are in a price war over the best kids, but risky if their ‘brand’ is damaged.</p>
<p>I think that the entire question of ‘merit aid’ needs to be understood in the couple decade context in which it has thrived and exploded. It exists, because college rankings and student ‘stats’ exist.</p>
<p>For the most part the differences between peer colleges in groups of 20 – or maybe 50 – are perceived rather than real. Certainly for any one student, interested in a particular major, looking at a college report card to decide where to go is foolish. So what is a college to do, that wants to increase revenue ? The common answer from consultants has been “pay to get up in the rankings, and then recoup (and more) by being able to charge a higher tuition.” Merit aid is the vehicle whereby rankings are bought.</p>
<p>This strategy seems to have worked quite well for the early adopters, at least in the short term. I have watched waves of colleges over the last couple of years pay for NMF’s, then back off when their rankings goals were met. The problem now is that a price war has set in, so colleges like Hamilton are declining to bid.</p>
<p>That is fine, but the root problem of college rankings lists driving student and parent appreciation is as strong as ever. Until <em>that</em> problem is solved, I do not see artificially high list pricing and discount strategies going away. CTCL have the right idea in attempting to highlight their unique strengths and not stats, but they play the rankings game as much as anybody.</p>
<p>Just an opinion – no marketing or economics degrees to add credence ;)</p>
<p>I think the complaint against merit aid is similar to the complaint against tax abatements when a big company that makes big profits is looking to move part of its business. The global optimum (as far as cities are concerned) is to not provide any tax abatements, but when one city offers an enticement, then the other cities follow, else they will be left behind. The result in either case is that the cities still would still get some share of business, but less taxes from the big businesses with generous tax abatements (but someone has to pay taxes, you know who that is).</p>
<p>The merit aid students are students who are going to college somewhere, whether they get merit aid or not. The global optimum for colleges is not to provide merit aid, so those students who can afford it will pay full price, so more money for the colleges, so more money for need-based aid, so goes the argument. What we have now is that almost every college offers merit aid, in large part because most other colleges offer merit aid. To the extent this sucks up money that would have gone to need-based aid, this is a bad thing (again so goes the argument).</p>
<p>Of course, your DS or DD deserves the merit aid, but I haven’t seen much argument why our taxes should go to increasing merit aid at the expense of need-based aid.</p>
<p>Agreed with both points by EricLG and spurster. The reality is that most of those merit scholarships aren’t coming from tax dollars. They are coming from endowments which are often funded by donors and alumni.</p>
<p>I LOVE Hamilton, in part because they don’t give out merit aid (but they do guarantee 100% of need-based aid!) While it may be superficial, as EricLG believes, I think their rejection of merit aid shows that they believe they don’t have to bribe students to attend. Of course, I’m also a fan of their curriculum and community. Hamilton is definitely my favorite elite rural LAC, even though I don’t think I’d be happy in such an isolated environment.</p>
<p>[I hope that viscerally emotional (and perhaps immature, or at least irreverent) blurb doesn’t undermine my intellectual argument against merit aid as a perpetuation of income inequality.]</p>
<p>"Of course, your DS or DD deserves the merit aid, but I haven’t seen much argument why our taxes should go to increasing merit aid at the expense of need-based aid. "</p>
<p>Taxes (IMHO) should be like loans: collected and spent when the benefit is greater than the P&I. Same goes for public subsidy of merit aid. Underwriting prestige-whoring or partying by the middle-class fails this test. Big time.</p>
<p>
Eric you have raised some very good question and made me think through my position on merit aid much deeper and clearer … however attacks and demeaning comments such as the one above do not help your cause at all IMO.</p>
<p>There can be competing approaches to issues both of which have pros and cons … that does not make the other approach evil. I actually have two personal objections to merit aid only one of which I have shared … the fact using aid money for merit aid reduces the amount of money available for financial aid.</p>
<p>There is a second reason … which I am hesitant to share … it is a resaon that bothers me personally but one I know it not shared widely and one that directly conflicts with what a lot of other posters on CC see as a big positive. I do not see these other posters as evil or defective or anything else negative … they are just focused on other attibutes of schools. I see no need to attack them or their beliefs.</p>
<p>The second thing about merit aid I do not like, well actually hate, is a school systematically tiering its students and giving special treatment to a subset of students … many posters see merit aid, honors dorms, priority scheduling, etc as reward for their high achieving student. Personally, I see this as stratifying the students within a school and creating a class of preferred students … and find this a big negative about a school. I do not believe that others with a different viewpoint are evil, mean-spirited, or lacking in some way … they are just looking at the situation from a different viepwoint … and I would appreciate the same respect in return.</p>
<p>Thankfully there are schools that approach these different ways and different students and families can find schools that align with their personal beliefs.</p>
<p>Eric, you ate 100% right when you write:
Where many of us diverge from Thacker’s proposal is that he advocates collusive behavior and a form of price fixing (more accurately discount fixing). That Hamilton has decided to decline to participate in the merit aid method of competition is fine with me. What isn’t fine with me is if Hamilton gets together with a group of 20 schools and engages in a covenant not to compete with other schools. Hamilton made a unilateral business decision, something that is their right and does not affect the consumer. </p>
<p>Ultimately, price wars are good for consumers - they drive down prices and create accountability on the part of merchants. And the Thacker proposal places a moratorium on price wars. That is the basis, indeed the only basis, on which I object.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, there are many schools with merit aid programs that do not fragged. GaTech, Duke, UCh, UNC, JHU, CW, Emory, Pitt all have merit programs along with those schools that give auto scholarships to NMS winners. Then we have the whole area of athletic scholarships. My friend who can easily afford college has a D who won a full ride soccer scholarship. I know a number of kids in that situation. So she can take the money if it’s for sports, but not for academic excellence?</p>
<p>“The second thing about merit aid I do not like, well actually hate, is a school systematically tiering its students and giving special treatment to a subset of students … many posters see merit aid, honors dorms, priority scheduling, etc as reward for their high achieving student. Personally, I see this as stratifying the students within a school and creating a class of preferred students … and find this a big negative about a school.”</p>
<p>Which is one of the reasons that D “opted out” of the NMF scholarships at large schools. She felt uncomfortable being singled out with others. But, I’m not sure I see much of a difference between isolating kids in some sort of “honors territory” vs. going to an isolated campus in NW Mass which she is doing.</p>
<p>I agree, GTAlum. With one exception, Honors Colleges I have seen integrate their students to a degree that it is not a segregating thing. They do often get first dibs on registering for courses, and for certain courses, and sometimes for special housing, but that does not seem to be a big deal thing. Though my son opted out of honors housing his freshman year, which he could have gotten. By junior year most of those honors kids were in the school apartments or off campus housing like everyone else; many only stayed there through freshman year, and not all of the rooms in that dorm were honors program kid, nor was the dorm any different from the others on campus.</p>
<p>Now the athletes, that is a different story. Not only do they get to sign up early for their classes, get special academic support, they get housing close to the gym and together, often, and special meals at times. My oldest got his laundry done for him as well and first shot at any of the jobs at the gym, really guaranteed jobs at the gym if they wanted them. That plus a number of free mails throughout the week whether on the meal plan or not. My son could not use most of the meals we bought for him on the plan.</p>
<p>As the parent of an honors’ program student, I would add that I don’t look at honors housing as some big perq that I think my child deserves because she is just so darn smart. Rather, I look at it as offering her a choice to live with kids who may be a bit more interested in academics and respectful of someone who wants to study. </p>
<p>This past year, she opted not to live in honors housing, but instead chose another learning community that turned out to be social central and was nearly disastrous for her. Her suitemates had no empathy at all for her when she wanted to sleep at 2 a.m. because she had earlier classes (and science alnd language lclasses versus humanities classes). She finally got it straightened out, but not without a lot of drama. She could not study in her room at all.</p>
<p>And the learning disabled kids get extra help and tutoring and accommodations, too. (Sorry - couldn’t resist being Devil’s Advocate.)</p>
<p>I don’t see a problem for athletes getting priority registration, particularly since they will be travelling for their college teams during the school year. Scheduling classes so that they maximize the student’s ability to stay in classes and not miss due to travel or practice seems like a good policy, to me. </p>
<p>Same with separate dorms for them. Especially when the coach has early practices or study sessions and wants quiet time after a certain hour. Housing the student-athletes together and focused seems like it would be conducive to keeping kids on the straight and narrow and away from the random daily parties that often plague residence halls. </p>
<p>All colleges seem to be offering learning and living communities - don’t see any issue with that, either. The kids want to be substance-free? Okay, sounds good. Or service-oriented kids want to be housed together, sure, great idea.</p>
<p>“What isn’t fine with me is if Hamilton gets together with a group of 20 schools and engages in a covenant not to compete with other schools.”</p>
<p>They don’t need to collude. E.g., one airline makes a unilateral fare move, and if the others don’t follow, it must be undone. With schools, it may take years to see if there are followers, instead of the airlines’ days, and even then a school might go it alone.</p>
<p>Maybe Hamilton is trying something like Reed did, abandoning merit aid like Reed abandoned USNWR (a doubling of applications followed). Time will tell.</p>
<p>I’ll be more impressed when Hamilton (and all the rest) cut their advertising budgets.</p>