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

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/freebies-for-the-rich.html
Freebies for the Rich
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times
September 24, 2013


Many of the NYT commenters object to this article, I'm glad to see. An important reason that "merit metrics like SAT scores tend to closely correlate with family income" is that smart people tend to earn more money and have smart kids. There is a place for aid that depends on merit, need, and a mix of the two.

For most middle class families, college debt is only avoidable with significant merit aid. (Okay, this is also not really what I think most people mean by "rich" either; that is, two parent incomes in the well-paid professional category can readily push a parental income into the 200K+ range but that family still has a budget and thinks before they spend. KWIM? Now, RICH-rich is another story.)

So no, I don't consider merit-based scholarship awards to UMC kids to be "stealing" from the deserving low SES kids, necessarily. Assuming that the evaluation of "merit" is meaningful and a good proxy for whatever it is that colleges are interested in, that is.

For me as a taxpayer helping to support public universities, my preference is for mostly merit based aid, and mostly determined on the basis of likely college preparedness and COMPLETION rates. The data is out there-- it's just that we don't particularly care for what it tells us.

I seriously doubt the predictive power of most EC's to predict those things-- those wind up being proxies for SES; and yes, SES has predictive value all by itself. Maybe not because those kids are smarter inherently, but they are almost certainly better prepared.

We can't fix this particular problem with post-secondary money. By then it's too little too late. We're trying to remediate nearly two decades of intellectual neglect at variable levels. It's like thinking that food security issues begin at 18 and that we can "fix" early childhood malnutrition by making up for it in young adults. No wonder that isn't particularly successful.

I sure wish this problem were as simple as need-based versus merit-based-- but it's not. Many of the kids who SHOULD get merit-based aid have been denied the supports that would get them there. There's little doubt about that. It just seems to be so darned intractable a problem to solve.

My state disburses vast amount of money through a purely merit-based scholarship system. In practice, what this means is that there are now a lot of very rich students at the state universities. It did keep wealthy students in state for college, if that was the goal. I don't find that much of a goal. I think the real reason behind this is right there in your quote:

"Raising the tuition and then offering a 25 percent scholarship to four wealthier kids who might otherwise have gone to private school generates more revenue than giving a free ride to one who truly needs it. Incidentally, enticing these students also helps boost a school’s rankings. "

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.

ITA. There is so much more to the equation than simply drawing a connection that "smart families have smart kids and smart people make more money therefore there will be more smart kids at higher SES". Undoubtedly that is a part of the equation - but there are so many challenges that lower income students are often faced with - lack of parental support due to any number of reasons (parents working multiple jobs, parental disconnect, parents not having reached higher education levels etc), learning disabilities potentially going unnoticed, lack of resources in schools, first language not English.. and more. Sometimes something as simple as having an adult mentor to occasionally cheer you on.

Just my perspective, but the issues that cause that SES gap in merit-based aid... those issues need to be addressed (and solutions *funded*) in earlier school - long before the students are ready to apply for university.

polarbear





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I was a kid of a family that started working class and ended up okay middle class by the time I went to college. I earned a Regents scholarship to the UC system and we had enough need that they paid me to go there basically. My DH earned one, too, but his parents are better off so he got a more nominal aid package. I hope I've paid the state back by teaching, including student teaching and teaching in some needy schools. The hilarious thing was that whenever I won an academic contests they just deducted that amount from my need so I got nothing but anyway I was a high achieving borderline but certainly not impoverished kid who stayed in state and tried to give back.

No, they're definitely smarter.

Being poor reduces your IQ by 13 points due to the cognitive load of obsessing about money problems, such as keeping the heat on and the light bill paid.

Where do poor people go here, my clients ask me.

The woods, I say.

Which is true.

They also ask me what happens when the money runs out.

You become homeless, I say.

Which is also true.

"Poor people spend so much mental energy on the immediate problems of paying bills and cutting costs that they are left with less capacity to deal with other complex but important tasks, including education, training or managing their time, suggests research published on Thursday.

The cognitive deficit of being preoccupied with money problems was equivalent to a loss of 13 IQ points, losing an entire night's sleep or being a chronic alcoholic, according to the study. The authors say this could explain why poorer people are more likely to make mistakes or bad decisions that exacerbate their financial difficulties."

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/29/poverty-mental-capacity-complex-tasks