Boston Globe-Article About Merit Aid

Parents Forum
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<p>Mini, you try to live as a family of 4 in SF for $60,000. You better have bought your house in SF a long time go because otherwise, that's poverty level. </p>

<p>And where I live, that's homeless, living in a car and pushing your belongings in a shopping cart. Except, the police will be on you so fast....</p>

<p>You need to adjust your numbers for location.</p>

<p>BlahdeBlah, people with incomes of $150,000 in many areas of the US are middle class. They live middle class lifestyles.</p>

<p>I don't know why people have so much trouble with this. I think the 3% throws them off. </p>

<p>Curmudgeon, I just played tennis today with an old acquaintance. He has a daughter graduating from Yale.</p>

<p>No job yet for his daughter and all he could do was complain about the $200,000 and student loans.</p>

<p>How's Rhodes looking? ;)</p>

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<p>"Mini, you try to live as a family of 4 in SF for $60,000. You better have bought your house in SF a long time go because otherwise, that's poverty level.</p>

<p>And where I live, that's homeless, living in a car and pushing your belongings in a shopping cart. Except, the police will be on you so fast....</p>

<p>You need to adjust your numbers for location."</p>

<p>I DID (that's what's so scary!) (The median is around $50k for the rest of California, except Los Angeles.) Most do NOT own homes. Don't ask me how they do it - except that SF has a very small percentage of residents with families at all.</p>

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<p>SF has a very small amount of families because they can't do it.</p>

<p>So let's not pretend, even in cyberspace.</p>

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<p>Tis true - they've been pushing their shopping carts into Richmond and Oakland.</p>

<p>Teacher aides in SF make $12.09 - $14.73 an hour. CNA's slightly less. There are a lot of 'em!</p>

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<p>I suspect that there are few colleges offering merit aid which do not also offer need based aid. And if the total aid numbers were analzyed in greater detail I am sure that some student offered merit aid would have qualified for compensatory need based aid in its absence.</p>

<p>The article clearly has a bias but is quite shallow in its coverage of the issue.</p>

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<p>"Well, <em>sigh</em>, all I know is that I Thank The Lord for the merit money Denison offered my kid. Without it, he'd be at a SUNY with all the other "middle class" kids (ha ). He would be just one more kid with no options."</p>

<p>Weenie, I know you mean well, but my kid may end up at a SUNY and I for one do not think they are bad schools. As a matter of fact, I think the English dept at Binghamton is far superior than the English dept at Ithaca, where my kid was offered 16K!</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, at one of the schools my D has applied to RD one of the english professors she would love to study under did her undergrad at Bing. This is a top-notch school and I am sure they had good reason to hire her.
I am hoping for some merit-aid from this school. ;-)</p>

<p>Merit aid, it's a good thing.</p>

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<p>Merit aid tends to be capitalistic in nature. Schools are competing for good students.
Need-based aid tends to be socialistic in nature putting college within the reach of those who cannot afford it, but have the intelligence and motivation to go to college.</p>

<p>I see a need for both. The author doesn't. The author seems to imply that societal benefit is important and can only be obtained by eliminating merit aid. He doesn't seem to think that a school like UofAlabama, for instance, is not only trying to improve its academics, but also trying to improve the economy of the state by attracting smart, out-of-state students with generous merit aid packages. That is deemed a worthwhile goal that has benefit to the people of Alabama by legislators/administrators. Who is the Globe reporter or the president of Tufts or a collegeboard researcher to sit in judgement? Do they think their objectives are more noble?</p>

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<p>Standrews -- I agree with you -- the system should have both. </p>

<p>Also -- as I said before, the author obviously doesn't have a clue as to how the need-based system works. Very few colleges provide grant aid to full meet the need of students as determined by the FAFSA. You asked about the "vagaries" of need-based aid. As a single parent, I face year-to-year uncertainty because I never know what my daughter's noncustodial (and noncontributing) father will earn, or what (or if) he will provide to the CSS-Profile school that insists on that information. There is a very real possibility that my daughter will lose all aid next year because of documentation that her father has not provided. (I was told in no uncertain terms, in a face-to-face meeting with the head of financial aid, that without that info no award would be calculated.) My daughter's father moved out of our house when she was 7 -- essentially, all her school years were spent in a home without her father-- he is under no legal obligation to contribute a dime for his over-18 kid and in fact has not done so -- and yet her "need" is determined by factors entirely outside of her control and which are of no benefit to her. </p>

<p>About all I can do is resign myself to the fact that this is a year-by-year thing, and prepare for the possibility that my daughter will not be able to attend college next year because her father is irresponsible. (As I told the financial aid person, there usually is a reason why people get divorced.) </p>

<p>If this were an unusual circumstance, then it would be mere whining on my part. But this is probably more common than not - especially among the neediest students; i.e., those who have grown up in single parent households with moms who were marginally employed, and only able to make ends meet with the child-support that is no longer coming in during the college years. It is also very common that the father earns more than the mother, whose employment options may have been constrained in part by the time demands of childcare responsibilities. So you might have a situation where a mom is earning around $40K, the parents have been divorced 15 years and the dad has remarried, relocated, has a new family and is and earning $200K -- but he's looking at the kid's 18th birthday as the end of the line for him in terms of financial contribution. Is this kid going to get need based aid? Probably not. </p>

<p>The merit system gives kids like this a chance -- the kid might not "qualify" for need-based aid, but at least with hard work and determination the kid can qualify for merit aid. </p>

<p>If the need-based system truly were one that met full need of each and every student, we would have the "socialistic" system that you posit -- but we don't. We have a system where a small handful of colleges will meet full need (as they define it) -- and merit largely determines which needy students will have access to those funds, whether or not it is designated as such.</p>

<p>--
On another note: this statement by Curmudgeon is technically incorrect: There is no GPA requirement for need awards other than "satisfactory progress toward a degree. My daughter's need-based award very clearly sets forth a GPA requirement -- it is 2.0, obviously not unreasonable -- but the point is if the kid fails to complete the requisite number of units per semester, or does poorly enough to warrant academic probation, need-based aid can be lost as well.</p>

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<p>calmom, that would then be Un-satisfactory progress at Barnard, then wouldn't it? ;)</p>

<p>Great points on the divorced spouse stuff. I am making notes for my little sis who will soon be in that exact situation with deadbeat dad. (But I'm going to seek to terminate his parental rights. ;))</p>

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<p>That's why I said the comment was "technically" incorrect -- I just wanted to make it clear that need-based aid has its limits as well. Keep in mind that there may be many needy students who have difficulty balancing courseload with work, may have learning disabilities, or may simply suffer from lack of adequate prep from their weaker public high schools and may have difficulty at some point with that requirement. They could very well find themselves needing to repeat courses to graduate on an extended 5 year schedule after a time they have exhausted their eligibility for need based aid. That was part of the reason my son left his first college -- he was still in good academic standing, but because of an issue with one of his classes he would probably have needed an extra semester to graduate; his college was verrry expensive and promised need-based aid for only 4 years. He had only taken "time off" -- when I saw his transcript I told him he couldn't go back to that school in any case, because of finances -- I mean, I couldn't have afforded to pay out 2 more years of what we owed after the need-based aid, knowing that he would still be short of needed credits to graduate. </p>

<p>Again -- need based aid is great -- it isn't the panacea that is being portrayed though. My son now has great grades at his current college, and is applying for a merit-based scholarship (also requiring need) for next year -- 45% of the kids at his college are Pell-eligible and the school simply doesn't have the funds available to meet everyone's need with grant aid. Heck,that school doesn't even have the funds available to keep paying its own faculty -- a lot of layoff notices have gone out this year. </p>

<p>And my example of the divorced parent is merely one of many different circumstances that put truly needy kids out of the running. My son did not qualify for any financial aid this past year because after working full time the past few years, he had accumulated about $10K in savings and had a tax return showing about $25K in earnings -- but because he was under age 24, he was viewed as a dependent, and my income/earnings was weighed in, and he was given no allowance whatsoever for his living expenses. His share of the EFC was well above the $10K he had saved (around $14K or so). (And let's see anyone manage to save more on a $25K/income, living on their own). At the same time his sister -- who had no moneyof her own but my support -- qualified for a Pell grant. </p>

<p>I think about how many poor and low income students there must be who simply make the decision to defer college for 2 or 3 years after high school graduation so they can work to earn money, and then turn around and discover that their income puts them out of the running for aid. It's not just that their parent's income is counted in -- it's also that they don't qualify for any of the allowances that at least provide basic living expenses. So the need-based aid system penalizes kids for working and earning... when the most natural thing for a kid with financial need to want to do is to get a job. I wonder how many simply do so without realizing the negative effects: for example, suppose a kid decides to live at home, attend the local community college, and work half-time during the year and full time over the summer? Two years down the line the kid is ready to transfer and in for the rude awakening that his earnings and savings have driven his EFC sky high.</p>

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<p>janesmom: I did not mean (really) to "diss" SUNY. (Although I graduated from SUNY Bing and consider it possibly the worst school in the whole world - at least at the time - it was, ;) , a long time ago.) My point was about options, and whether kids have any choices or not.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
"It is far from clear to me how society is better off when scarce financial aid resources are diverted from the neediest students to those who are not needy by any measure, simply to redistribute high scoring students among our institutions."

[/quote]

It is puzzling that Bacow does not acknowledge that the the quality of the student peer population is as important to the collegiate experience as the professors, physical plant, athletic teams, etc (if not more so). As such, redistribution of high scoring students is exactly what any institution (private or public) that aims to improve the quality of this experience should seek.</p>

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<p>wouldn't merit scholarships also make many kids work hard, take school work seriously and apply their brains? (also at most places they have to maintain GPA that is higher than need based GPA requirement)</p>

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<p>"So the need-based aid system penalizes kids for working and earning"</p>

<p>As you have described it, yes. That's why I view need-based aid as socialistic. One of the consequences is that it kills motivation to get a job in the first place or penalizes the kid because he is now a "have" as opposed to a "have not". OTOH, merit aid enhances motivation to do well academically or athletically or musicly, etc. There is the hope of reward, not punishment, for those efforts.</p>

<p>The problems with need-based aid seem to center around the difference between being poor and looking poor, or, if you prefer, being rich or looking rich. (I use these terms in a relative sense, not absolutes.) The assumption is that if you look rich, you are rich, and if you look poor, you are poor. Determination of EFC is based upon looks at a particular point in time, or points of time over a number of years. A kid who starts working at time0 to save money to go to school because he IS poor, LOOKS rich at time1, when a FAFSA is filed. If information is missing, e.g. deadbeat dad won't participate, the analyzers of financial status can't tell what you look like. With no looks to go on, they assume you are rich.</p>

<p>In need aid we are dealing with an imperfect system. Providing alternatives, such as merit aid, is preferable to fine tuning the need-based aid system to perfection, even if it were possible. Loans are another alternative. They really aren't aid, just a payment plan. Access to loans is a form of assistance, but the loans them self are not.</p>

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<p>Unless an 18-year-old has a trust fund, EVERY applicant NEEDS financial aid to go to any college.</p>

<p>The reality is that financial aid helps the PARENTS. Poor parents are rewarded and rich parents are not.</p>

<p>An applicant who has rich parents who won't pay gets nothing.</p>

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<p>The financial bottom line of colleges outside the top 20 can be helped by offering merit aid. Eg it's beneficial to have 4 enrolled students paying say 85% of the list price through minor merit awards, than not having those 4 students at all. This income makes it easier for the college to carry other students on financial aid. The top 20 colleges have so many applicants that they can enroll enough full payers to carry FA students. Even the top 20 type schools have about 50% of all students paying full price.</p>

<p>Not all schools can enjoy the advantages of being located in wildly popular suburban Boston as does Tufts.</p>