Merit vs. Need-blind marketing

interesteddad
Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:30:06 +0000

They don’t offer it because they don’t need to.



Actually, I only know of about five schools that don’t need to offer merit aid discounting to attract the students they really want. There are a couple dozen schools that need to offer it, but don’t.

In this case, the reason really is the principle of the thing. There are only “x” number of dollars and every dollar that is used for merit aid is a dollar that is NOT available for need-based aid to lower income students.

I don’t know how much longer the few remaining need-based aid schools can hold on to their principle. They lose a LOT of students who would be perfect for them.

BTW, technically even these need-based aid schools are offering merit-discounts to their students. Swarthmore, for example, spends $66,000 per student per year on undergrad education. So even a “full-fare” customer is not really paying the full cost of goods solds.