Do Merit Scholarships Steal From Low-income Students?

I read this this morning.

“…3% of students come from families with the lowest 25% of incomes. In contrast, 72% of students come from families with the highest 25% of incomes. This means that for every low-income student at the elite schools there are 24 wealthy students…”.

“…taking scarce financial aid dollars from low-income students to give to students who don’t need it amounts to Robin Hood in reverse – robbing from the poor to give to the rich.”

“…Because wealthier students don’t depend on merit aid to stay in school…”

Editor’s Note: Former New York City Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy is executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which awards scholarships to high-achieving students from low-income families and grants to organizations that serve such students.

He is complaining that schools give freshmen a one time merit scholarship freshman year for around $4000. He wants that money to go to poorer students.

I wonder exactly how much income is the 75th percentile

http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/

oh look Money does it for us : 75% is $99,000.

Oh yeah, so lets take the merit aid from the wealthy families making $99,000 a year…

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