Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Merit aid as "Freebies for the Rich"

My state has increased merit-based scholarships significantly in recent years, but the intent wasn't to attract "wealthy" families to the state university system - instead the intent was to keep our brightest and most promising young students in-state so that hopefully when they graduated, they would also stay in-state and contribute to our local economy. We're a state that not only doesn't have a Harvard or a Stanford or an MIT, but our state university system was seen as sub-par compared to other state university systems that most of our brighter students were considering - so our state was essentially suffering a "brain drain". Most of the students who went to school out of state never returned, so employers attempting to hire locally didn't have qualified applicants to choose from. Offering those merit-based scholarships has really made a huge difference - but not in the sense of keeping wealthy students in state and therefore generating more revenue for our universities. There *has* been a significant increase in *donations* to our universities occurring at the same time - from corporations who are building programs worthy of the bright kids the state is attempting to retain. 10 years ago I would not have considered letting my kids stay in state for university, but I now feel there are good programs here and if they want to stay in state, it will be ok.

more to follow....

polarbear

ps - fwiw, from the limited number of students I know... the students who take advantage of our in-state merit scholarships usually aren't the uber-wealthy (not that we have a lot of uber-wealthy families here anyway lol), and they aren't the DYS-level scholars who have soared through the rafters and are the top-ranking-hit-the-ceiling high school seniors. Instead they tend to be students who are bright, did very well in high school, but didn't receive full-ride scholarships or are from families who are financially challenged enough (and this can include middle-class) that traveling home for holidays etc and living out of state might have been a stretch financially.