<p>“One, of course, can say the same about merit, insofar as grades are often subjective and criteria for awarding merit can be argued about.”</p>
<p>Marite, I think your above statement ^ could easily be applied to the decisions of university admissions committees as well. </p>
<p>I agree that it would be a great thing if the “millionnaire’s father” contributed to the school and “endowed a scholarship.” (Uh, would that be a merit scholarship?) Perhaps his son will one day do that, too.</p>
<p>marite/jack: I think many agree on your last points.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Do you favor eliminating athletic scholarships to increase need based aid?</p>
<p>Jack, I agree about decisions by university admissions committees. And I don’t care if the scholarship that may (or most likely will not) be endowed is a merit scholarship or a contribution to the general scholarship fund as long as the financial aid system remains what it is. Personally, when I make my annual contribution, I earmark it for the general scholarship fund (s).</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Do you favor eliminating advertizing budgets for colleges in order to increase need based aid?</p>
<p>curious14:</p>
<p>Yes. I’m not in favor of athletic scholarships.
I’m in favor of giving athletes a tip (and see the thread I started on Low-SAT legacies) but I don’t see why athletes should get scholarships as such.
But then, I’m not athletic so perhaps other posters can enlighten me as to why this subset of students should get scholarships instead of, say, tuba players or classics majors.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Do you favor reducing university president’s salaries inorder to increase need based aid?</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Do you favor spending the assets of the endowment to increase need based aid?</p>
<p>Curious14:</p>
<p>Harvard has made a huge push to attract more low income students to apply, and it has resulted in more low income students applying and being admitted. I see the benefits of advertising.<br>
There could obviously be more efficient, better targeted advertising, and that might be less costly. However, I believe that to achieve better targeting, a college might need more research, which would mean more expenses.
To make an analogy: A new pizza parlor is opening in the neighborhood and decides to advertise. It’s less costly to hire a teenager to put leaflets in every mailbox than to do research as to which households are occupied by families with children and thus more likely to buy pizzas. I suspect the same goes for college advertising.
By the way, we received only a very few pieces of college advertising as my Ss did not check boxes on the PSAT forms.</p>
<p>Curious: I feel like I am reading a Perry Mason trial transcript. “Marite, and where were you the night that the merit scholarhip was given out? Quick, I want a yes or no answer!”</p>
<p>Curious14:
Obviously, you are trying to challenge me.<br>
I don’t know what regulations govern the spending of endowments of individual institutions. In general, non-profit organizations are supposed by law to spend 5% of their endowment annually.
More than that, and individual colleges would have to consider how prudent it is to be dipping into their endowment.</p>
<p>EDIT: Oldolddad, thanks. My Ss applied to two colleges that give only need-based aid. I was nowhere in sight when merit aid was awarded. :)</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>I could pose thousands of such questions to you. I’m trying to illustrate what is meant by the fungibility of money. It is the reason why the argument that merit aid is bad because it reduces need based aid is flawed.
If you don’t like merit aid for some other reason fine, but this argument is pitifully weak.</p>
<p>I tried the straight forward version in post 136. I figured I’d switch to spoon feeding.</p>
<p>I am not sure how fungible money is.
For example, suppose that a college has operating expenses of $xxx, based on spending 5% of endowment. Of that there will be salaries and benefits to profs, administrative and other staff. There will be building maintenance; debt servicing; and many other expenses that must be covered. I suppose a college could stop buying books and subscribing to periodicals and put the savings in the scholarship fund. In fact, many colleges have drastically reduced book buying because it’s more expensive and because they’ve run out of space. I’ve been told that a print run for academic books nowadays run to about 800 copies unless the book is expected to sell really well. Thirty years ago, academic presses could count on selling 600 copies to libraries. No more. In other words, savings from libraries have already been made and could not go to replenish scholarship funds.
Could colleges achieve sagins? Undoubtedly. And perhaps, more efficient use of resources will increase the size of the scholarship fund.
But in general, I accept that when a college says it has earmarked $xxx for scholarships, that is what it feels it can do under present circumstances. If it wants to spend more on financial aid, it usually has to go out and raise the funds. And if it wants to award merit aid, this has to be taken from the general scholarship fund.
It was adofficer who made the case about robbing Peter to pay Paul. S/he is closer to admission offices than I am. Perhaps s/he will be able to address your questions better than I can.</p>
<p>
I see you have one foot on each side of the line, too on need aid as it is presently “configured”. I agree, but you knew that. ;)</p>
<p>I raised this point a while back. What about students from affluent families who receive no college funding from those families? They do not qualify for need based scholarships. My husband came from such a background. He had to spend 3 years in the military during the 60’s, ended up in Vietnam. Received a college diploma when he was 28 (GI bill, worked his way through school). It’s a broad assumption that all parents continue providing financial support to their children after high school.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Let me try another approach. Apart from your belief that it reduces need based aid do you have other objections to merit aid?</p>
<p>I think many of us have “one foot on each side of the line.” I know I do. I don’t consider myself to be “anti-merit aid.” I do, however, have some serious concerns about the larger picture of how colleges are allocating their financial aid/merit aid dollars.</p>
<p>And to the person who challenged me to have my daughter donate her $10,000 merit award to a needy student – as I already said, she’s not attending that school, so it’s not an issue. I’d love the school to take that award and give it to another kid who needs financial aid. As someone who paid for college with loans and grants (based on financial need), I always designate my donations to my alma mater for financial aid.</p>
<p>I think many good schools face a dilemma. They want to attract top students who often want to go to a more “prestigious” school. Their alums want this to happen. I think most really do want to help as many students as they can with financial aid too. The problem is that once you set something as merit you can’t stipulate that someone who is rich should not apply. As was said merit is merit. One hopes that these offers will usually have an effect on the middle income kids but there will always be those of high income who “earn” them.
(I wonder how many high income folks turn back their social security checks because they do not need them?). I wonder how many students who recieve things like the Morehead and go on to be successful give back to the schools? I think that many full paying middle class familes and their kids do cringe when after writing their first $40 K + check for the year, they get a phone call asking for donations to the school.</p>
<p>Nope.
Obviously, this applies to college-based merit aid only. There are many scholarships that are not college-based (such as Intel, Jack Kent Cooke, and so forth), which do not divert monies from a general scholarship fund from need-based to merit-based aid.<br>
But please refer to post 155 by Curmudgeon. I am not opposed to merit-aid under present circumstances.</p>