<p>The acceptance of the scholarship, IMHO, is neither. If the recipient otherwise lives a selfish and ungenerous life, that’s another matter altoghether.</p>
<p>If the daughter of a wealthy person sought a job and was offered a premium salary because of her GPA/resume, etc. should she reply: “I’m wealthy already. I’ll just accept minimum wage”? I guess AMTC would say so.</p>
<p>According to his/her logic, that would be her only non-sinful course of action.</p>
<p>In my world, she is completely free to accept a very high salary. If she then is an covetous person with that wealth, then that’s open to judgement. </p>
<p>I see this no different than the child of a wealthy celebrity accepting a merit scholarship from an institution.</p>
<p>Of course he “earned” his scholarship, if the scholarship has parameters for academic and/or athletic accomplishments, and he fulfilled those requirements, then he earned the scholarship. Seriously? From what I hear he’s a good student with good stats along with his athletic accomplishments.</p>
<p>If he’s good enough to get a scholarship and play, he’s good enough to get a scholarship and play. Are you saying that wealthy student athletes should only be allowed walk-on tryouts?</p>
<p>@amtc: Mayor Bloomberg is to be praised for it. I agree.</p>
<p>Now what does that have to do w/this student? In your utopia, no one, who achieves a certain amount of wealth can righteously accept any compnesation. Frankly, it sounds like a warped socialism, to be frank. These communes and social experiments are the grist of sociology books.</p>
<p>The Judeo-Christian ethic does not demean wealth or even the pursuit of it. Avarice w/o concern for one’s fellow man is fully condemned.</p>
<p>But back to my argument: the weathy college grad, fully at the top of her class in grades, experience and accomplishments – a highly sought after recruit – by implication of her assets can not (according to you) accept a high salary. Is this so?</p>
<p>Then also, is an employer (or college) acting immorally if they offer these wages (scholarships) to people who are wealthy? Isn’t that the logical implication of your line of argument?</p>
<p>The whole point I’m trying to make is there is nothing wrong with offering or accepting a high wage/compensation/scholarship if it’s been fairly competed. What one does with that wealth (being greedy or generous) is fully discussed in Judeo-Christian teaching. You should focus on the latter and not the former. You’re off base in your understanding of mainstream Judeo-Christian teaching.</p>
<p>Are people STILL talking about this? Poor kid. He did what he was supposed to do-work hard despite the fact that he could have been set for life without lifting a finger and people call it sinful? Shame on you. Leave the kid alone.</p>
<p>Chelsea Clinton is an interesting example. By all accounts, she was a serious, good motivated student who took advantage of her (obviously considerable) connections but worked hard at Stanford. If I recall correctly, upon graduating college or grad school, she took a job with McKinsey and then worked for some capital group (don’t recall the specific one). Sure, probably some of that was because at McKinsey, if someone wanted to talk to say, the secretary of the treasury, they could hand the phone to Chelsea and she could get that person on the phone. But so what? I don’t begrudge her using her connections like that, and I don’t think she was under one iota of obligation to seek out or accept a low-paying job (unless she so desired).</p>
<p>Who said wealthy kids were <em>more</em> impressive if they are superior in something?<br>
And where is the cut-off - it’s ok for the kid whose parents make $60,000 to need outside accreditation of his/her expertise" … how about the kid whose parents make $120,000 … $600,000 … $1.2 million … Where is the precise cut-off where a kid “shouldn’t” need outside accreditation? Does that mean rich kids shouldn’t ever enter academic, athletic or artistic contests?</p>
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<p>So what? The amount of money I save clipping coupons on my groceries is pocket change to my family too, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.</p>
<p>As long as there are athletic scholarships, ANY athlete who is offered a scholarship “deserves” that scholarship. I am all for more aid to the needy, but an athletic scholarship is an athletic scholarship. The kid deserves it as much as any other kid who is equally talented.</p>
<p>Athletic scholarships and merit money are handed out by schools to woo students who provide something they want: athletic prowess, high stats, diversity, particular talents…something that they perceive as helping achieve their institutional mission. As has been well documented elsewhere, a school can improve its stats and rankings by managing yield using merit money. It is cheaper to give two close to full-pay kids with high stats a $10K merit award to entice them to come than to fully support one poor kid who needs $50K. So they give the pair of full pays a discount and gap the poor kid with equal or even better stats. There are obvious plusses involved with accepting a kid like this one, especially since he is apparently well-qualified on all fronts and likely to succeed. It’s good publicity. His father is very rich, and he’s a development admit. If they chose to woo him with an athletic scholarship, knowing that he didn’t really NEED it, what else is new? It’s not like they are using public funds to do it. That might be worth complaining about, but in the other thread it was stated that these scholarships are fully funded from within the program. I would venture to guess that his father will give the U more $$ than they would have gotten in regular fees.</p>