this is kind of a dumb article because it only proposes two kinds of students – wealthy students who can afford full-pay but take advantage of merit scholarships, and poor students who have their need-based aid “stolen away” by the mere existence of merit aid.
it completely fails to mention the literally millions of students from lower-to-middle income families who might not necessarily qualify as “poor” but cannot remotely fund $50K-$60K per year for college. for such students who work hard to achieve good grades and test scores, merit scholarships are a vital piece of the paying-for-college puzzle.
the article also misses a rather obvious point that merit scholarships are not designated for wealthy students – poor kids can earn them too.
the handy dandy http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ tells us that full rides are available at several schools for ANY student – rich or poor – who hits certain GPA+SAT/ACT requirements. this falls under the category of the dreaded “merit aid” that this article tries to argue is a bad thing. these are concrete examples of merit aid making college attainable for low-income students.
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But 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.<<
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this is baloney. author is flatly stating that all students are either rich or poor. there are literally tens of millions who fall in between these two poles. and what about a poor kid who busts his tail and earns a full-ride merit scholarship to Howard University? how exactly is his merit aid robbing from the poor?
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at our nation's most selective colleges, a mere 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.<<
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well … so what? these same numbers tell me that the entire middle 50% of family income only accounts for 25% of students at the most selective colleges. so where is the article bemoaning the woeful under-representation of talented students from the middle 50% at these schools?
all this article demonstrates is that enrollment at the most selective colleges is – drumroll please – skewed toward the wealthy. gee. stop the presses. you don’t say. it does not address how merit aid is impacting, positively or negatively, the availability of need-based financial aid from the 3000 or so other colleges that 95% of us will wind up attending.