<p>^^^ Your child’s tuition is also reduced by the endowment (the “automatic scholarships” that reduce the sticker price- i.e. the state of NC pays $12,000 for every full-time UNC student).</p>
<p>Should the board of trustees get a picture of your child and his report card? Should your son have to write a letter each month?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Make sure you mail that letter, of course, to the Governor and legislature of North Carolina for generously expropriating all that money to make college cheaper for, well, for everyone.</p>
<p>That’s true but schools who eliminate merit aid often increase their financial cut-offs for need based (institutional) aid and/or guarantee to limit/eliminate loans from FA packages.</p>
<p>A school can only do that if the source of the merit money agrees to that. At my kids’ school, the school was able to get its merit money from wealthy donors who specifically want the money to go towards high stats kids to help raise the status of the school. If the school were to eliminate merit, those wealthy donors might cease to give since their primary purpose - to improve the school’s ranking/status - would no longer would exist. </p>
<p>Of course, not all donors specify where they want money spent, so when rankings increase and unspecified donor money increases, the school can provide more institution aid.</p>
<p>Sometimes you got to spend money in areas that may seem “not fair” to low income people, in order to help those people in a greater way in the future. Sometimes you got to spend money to make money. My pastor said that when asked why he was hosting lavish dinner parties to court wealthy donors to the new Catholic school. For every dollar that he spent on a lavish dinner was returned in multitudes by these donors. </p>
<p>People pick on merit money, but the same argument can be used with why schools spend millions on lavish landscaping, gorgeous buildings, etc ). Some could argue that that money could go towards the poor. But, the school benefits in the long run by making such investments in the school’s appearance.</p>
<p>“At my kids’ school, the school was able to get its merit money from wealthy donors who specifically want the money to go towards high stats kids to help raise the status of the school. If the school were to eliminate merit, those wealthy donors might cease to give since their primary purpose - to improve the school’s ranking/status - would no longer would exist.” --mom2collegekids</p>
<p>And I would like to personally thank all those donors who are paying my kid’s merit scholarship, which I assume is through the endowment, so she can raise the stats at Pitt.
We could have been full-pay several places.</p>
<p>I have no problem with the schools, or donors to the schools, buying smart kids. Schools do it all the time with athletes. I see no difference here at all. They buy athletes with scholarships and lowered admission requirements all the time. They do it to boost the public’s and alumni’s view of the school. Why not with merit money to buy smart kids away from HYP?</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>And you shouldn’t. As I observed earlier in this thread, the athletic model works and produces higher levels of achievement year over year.</p>
<p>Competition is the answer to spiraling costs.</p>
<p>^^ exactly… (frogmouth)</p>
<p>There is a whole lot of whining about the cost of merit aid being forced upon the average full-price paying student. What these people find convenient to ignore is the benefit that those students are probably gaining from the presence of these merit recipients. Students work together, help and advise one another, and inspire each other. If a school uses some if its funds to lower the price of admission and woo a future fields medal-winning mathematician, he will probably be a huge benefit to the students in his Differential Equations classes. Also, consider that students are in many cases more likely to find explanations they can understand for difficult concepts from their own brilliant peers.</p>
<p>Bottom line: If I consider what element of college will be the most beneficial to me, the answer is without a doubt the extremely intelligent peers. Therefore, it seems natural that a part of my tuition money should go towards providing that beneficial element.</p>
<p>^^ I agree, this thread has degenerated into a middle-class whine. If merit aid should be done away with to spare the hapless mediocre full pay student, the financial reasoning must be that much more true for need-based aid.</p>
<p>I do agree that multiple inflationary pressures are coming together to drive prices ever upward as colleges compete. Don’t stop at aid though; small classes, pretty campuses, fantastic gyms, great food, prestigious professors … it is all felt in tuition.</p>
<p>I really doubt many schools use other students’ tuition to pay for merit. Merit is often from endowments.</p>
<p>Mom2collegekids,
See “In Twist in Tuition Game Popularity Rises witth Price” Dec 12, 2006. NYTimes. While there must be endowment gifts which go to aid, steep tuition increase decisions are sometimes made to keep up with competitors since if one college falls behind on the price of tuition compared to another, applications can fall because applicants think it may be “not worth as much”. When called on this, proponents said they turn around and funnel the money right back into aid, both need/merit-based and merit only-based. If they cut merit-only, then the brightest kids just above fafsa cut-off lines would have less incentive to apply to that school. And the steepness of the tuition increases are a slap in the face to their families. I would always support merit in addition to need based aid. I also agree what was said about peers.</p>
<p>^^ I know a professor at a university a tier below the state flagship. When he took a rotation in a committee involving tuition pricing, they hired an external consultant to review them. At that time that univ was one of the lowest in tuition cost. The recommendation from the consultant was to begin increasing their tuition so they would be above their peers, and immediately turn around and give the money back as grants. Their reasoning - the increased tuition will be seen as making the university rank higher, and more importantly, parents would feel they are getting generous scholarships.</p>
<p>“Bottom line: If I consider what element of college will be the most beneficial to me, the answer is without a doubt the extremely intelligent peers.”</p>
<p>My son just graduated from high school. We recently asked him who his best teacher was over the years. We were surprised at the name he gave us. He named a friend, the class valedictorian, and mentioned how he learned a great deal working with him on projects and homework.</p>
<p>“My son just graduated from high school. We recently asked him who his best teacher was over the years. We were surprised at the name he gave us. He named a friend, the class valedictorian, and mentioned how he learned a great deal working with him on projects and homework.”</p>
<p>Which is one of my issues with merit aid. Many schools offered my D, a NMS and class valedictorian, with generous merit scholarships. But, what she wants in college is to be in a community where she can learn from others. She doesn’t want to be one of only a handful of really smart kids. Fortunately, she is getting enough in grants from an non-merit aid school to allow her to go to her “dream college.” She saw the merit aid offers as helping the schools to boost their stats but not helping her.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I am in a grumpy mood…</p>
<p>1- These wealthy folks that people are putting down only make up what - 1%-5% of the US population. So why continue to single out this group of kids? 5% shouldn’t be a threat to anyone so if their stats are high, why shouldn’t they be rewarded with merit aid? America NEEDS to have as many high dollar earners as possible in order to fix this darn economic mess and in order to fund all of our programs. The kids who seek out these high buck jobs are usually the ones motivated by financial rewards.</p>
<p>2- After 4 years of college, every graduate will begin their lives on equal footing. Middle income kids should not be the only ones saddled with loan debt. </p>
<p>3- Why on earth do people want to support the concept of punishing success. (merit aid and salary) And why, oh why would anyone want the government to get involved in a discussion of merit aid? (or financial aid)</p>
<p>4- As full need met colleges are selecting their students, how can they possibly make a “well rounded” class by financially excluding most of the middle/upper middle class?</p>
<p>Many schools offered my D, a NMS and class valedictorian, with generous merit scholarships. But, what she wants in college is to be in a community where she can learn from others. She doesn’t want to be one of only a handful of really smart kids.</p>
<p>That can happen if the school only gives out a small number of merit scholarships. </p>
<p>But, when a school gives out a lot of merit scholarships, then the student isn’t the “one of the few” smart kids. Also, those students who get those big scholarships, tend to cluster in a handful of majors…eng’g, bio, chem, math, physics, etc, so there is even a great concentration of smart kids in those majors and in the prereqs for those majors.</p>
<p>
What’s wrong with that? If society as a whole has a need for smart kids who are engg/bio majors measured by job prospects, why not encourage this and perhaps begin increasing the size at the expense of, what was it, womens studies and religion that apparently doesn’t have that much demand?</p>
<p>
Government, based on history, has a habit of throwing taxpayer money around, and the people in debt and colleges who like to keep upping their costs may both want more government involvement if the end product is more taxpayer subsidies.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with that. I was mentioning it as a plus, so that those who feared being the only smart merit scholarship kid in engineering will know that there will be others like him if the school offers many merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Both of my kids accepted big merit scholarships. One is majoring in math and the other in ChemE. They are many kids in their classes who have similar stats, because they also accepted the big merit. GTAlum thought that by taking a big merit, her D wouldn’t be among a bunch of other smart kids. That would be true if the school doesn’t give many merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I chuckle when I read the posts about being one of a few smart kids. Kids choose colleges for all sorts of reasons. If a student chooses something in let’s say the top one hundred schools (and you could probably go much higher than that) in the country, there will be plenty of other smart kids. And different kids are good at different things. Education is what you put in to it, so I would argue that the very brightest among us will get a good education wherever they choose to attend college.</p>
<p>Sorry mom2, for misinterpreting. Thanks for the clarification.</p>