In Defense of Merit Aid

I was thinking about this the other day. Our state flagship tends to offer a lot of low amounts of “merit” aid to a lower threshold in a supposed effort to enroll more lower-income people in college. But what happens is that the lower income people still can’t afford to attend the university. It seems (to me, at least) that a better solution would be to “meet demonstrated need” to kids who have a much higher ACT/SAT score. Fewer kids would get more aid, but it will be the kids who are most likely to stay the course and graduate.

I sat on the scholarship committee of a small community foundation which had a fund to help low income kids bridge the gap between their aid and their need. Lab fees and books and even a bus ticket to get to orientation add up when the family budget is strained just keeping the lights on and paying the rent.

There are a lot of misconceptions about who gets aid-- and a lot of erroneous thinking about how easy it is for needy kids to cash in.

Yes- the kid growing up below the federal poverty line who gets in to Yale- win win. Each head of the individual colleges at Yale has a discretionary fund to help the kid who needs an emergency ticket home for a family funeral, or for lab fees or some other “not included in need based aid” item-- or to help the kid whose eyeglasses break and he is spending the semester with tape and chewing gum because new glasses are neither in the family budget nor his work study budget (which might be getting sent home to help the family). But a kid isn’t getting that at Rutgers or Binghamton or U Mass. Nobody is handing the needy kid $50 before the dining halls close on Thanksgiving weekend to keep him fed while he stays on campus (can’t afford to go home).

The ivies and other tippys that don’t give merit aid have effectively out-priced a large segment of the population. The ubers can afford it, and those low enough to get aid may manage it, but there is a significant part of the middle class/somewhat-upper class which simply can’t justify that kind of expense.

But there are only a handful of these schools, and they are massively selective. The effect is relatively small in the overall picture of higher education. If such were the case for all or most of the private schools in the US, I think that would be a major problem for many, many reasons. I see moving to such a system as only making a bad situation worse, worse, worse.

I agree with @sylvan8798 that you need to think through the economic consequences of removing merit aid. Every top middle-class and upper-middle class student making wise financial decisions today suddenly has no incentive not to go to the top school they can get into – their only choices are now to be buried in debt or not go to college at all, so might as well choose the debt at the “best” school possible! That will create even greater demand at the ivies and the like, which will result in higher costs that pull the rest of the next tier of institutions’ costs up with them. This is exactly what has been happening, but now we make it worse by removing one of the last major checks on the system – the ability of smart students from prudent families to make wise financial decisions.

I will confess that I find the premise “if you can afford to pay more for something, you should be charged more” frightening and am glad that we haven’t yet taken that position to the extreme. Take it to its logical conclusion, and you remove the very benefits that you have used to advocate for need-based aid: That is, that studies show that low-income individuals studying at top institutions have a higher likelihood of moving to middle- or upper-middle class in a single generation. But if you take away the advantages of middle and upper-middle class by re-appropriating their earnings to keep the playing field level, why bother? Is it somehow more noble for an individual in poverty to strive for a better standard of living than it is for someone who has achieved that standard to make wise decisions (like pursuing merit scholarships) to maintain it?

I have immigrant friends from all over the world who have moved to America because it gives them a chance to be rewarded for working hard. They work two or three jobs, go to school, and are thrilled with America – not just coming from third world countries, but from many European countries that put a cap on the ability to earn. They smile every time they speak of the opportunities available for their kids that they never had. It makes me sad that the people who were born into such a great (though far from perfect) country as ours want to throw it away in a rush to co-habitate mediocrity. I say let every institution in America celebrate and reward hard work and merit as much as possible, and stop apologizing for occasionally rewarding success.

As schools keep marching to 70K per year there will not be enough rich people to full pay at the schools that don’t offer merit but are not top 20 schools. 70K a year is a ridiculous amount of money to expect ANYONE to pay for college. Upper middle class families (including business owners or people who recently got big bumps in salary but have not been lifetime big earners) will have a lot less options for their strong ‘merit worthy’ students if all schools were to go merit-free (like the majority of the top 30 USNews National Universities and top 10 LACs). Those schools would be filled with rich full payers and kids from lower middle class families.

And of course, there is still plenty of ATHLETIC merit for kids at top schools.

Sometimes the custodian’s kid can go to the state school: full merit. With state schools so underfunded for FA, I was only able to go where I got full merit! (Yes my dad was the custodian). Poor kids can get merit too. In fact, I would guess that high income kids who get merit only take it if they don’t get somewhere better. $10k discount is not enough to make them choose a lower ranked school.

They will still have less expensive options, such as in-state public universities.

I’m not at all certain how to feel about this conversation. DS17 did win a competitive full ride to a university. And I am so grateful for so many reasons.

We have financial issues too current to be tied to the 2015 FAFSA.

He failed to prioritize some athletic options due to academic concerns, which could have potentially covered his expenses…

Maybe there are others factors that aren’t leaping off the top of my head? I don’t know. I will say - he did NOT apply to big name schools. He understood that those were need based. He watched classmates do so (some full pay, some need based) and he took another track. His path was just different from theirs. He chased automatic merit and competed for competitive merit.

So, is there anything wrong with prioritizing need based aid? No, not really. My son has no regrets about those full need schools (assuming they would professional judgment our current circumstances.) He does not envy the student who can go to such a school on such a package. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that model.

However, that some school still emphasize merit is still not only important but a good balance. The opportunities might be more unique but the school who offer merit do so for a reason. I can not see why it wouldn’t be against any universities interest to offer merit if that merit is accomplishing the goals it is set out to do (recruitment, etc.)

The idea that all schools should be need blind is admirable (regardless of how it would affect the newly unemployed or regionally gapped student) However, not all universities are on the same footing. Many have no need to improve their applicant pool. For those who do, for whatever reason, wish to improve (or dramatically) improve their applicant pool, the merit model makes sense.

It is possible to defend both models.

I get the full Pell Grant. I also got 19k in merit to one of the colleges I applied to. As a transfer student. Turns out that my state school with a state grant is still less expensive, so I’m going there. Any decently-embedded middle class kid would have been able to swing it, though. Point is: merit is out there, but you must chase it at less highly-ranked schools. Sometimes even at -gasp!- second-tier colleges. The pool of Vanity is ugly and irrational. Keep dipping your toes at your own risk.

So the solution is to take the need based aid away and give it to upper income people? It sounds like your state needs to find a way to offer low income students more aid, not less.

DD worked diligently through HS. DD studied for the SAT. DD got a good scholarship and a very real sense of accomplishment. She earns her education more than if we had paid for it.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

I don’t know why it is difficult to understand that need-based aid and merit-based aid serve different purposes.

  1. Merit aid attracts the **"We want you!"** students, who might otherwise go somewhere else. Without the merit aid, the overall caliber of the student body decreases, making the college less attractive for everyone attending.
  2. Need-based aid attracts the **"We will be happy to take you"** students who might otherwise be unable to attend.

Both can be important to a particular college.

@hebegebe is exactly right. Merit aid is a valuable enrollment management tool for many schools, and as such I think it’s here for the foreseeable future.

My daughter took a full tuition merit scholarship to attend a college that she would not have looked at if the merit scholarships did not exist. Once she looked at the school, it was probably her first choice even without the scholarship, though. We could have afforded to be full pay, but with a couple more kids coming down the pike, we really didn’t want to be. I’m grateful for merit aid and think it serves an important purpose.

I also find this thread odd. Did merit aid need defending? Were there really people out there saying “Pfffttt… you got merit aid? Shoulda gone the “need” route.” BOTH are enrollment management tools. Merit attracts high stats kids or serves as a discount for families looking for a bargain. Need brings in students who can keep certain institutions from becoming as homogenized as 2% milk.

The ‘need only’ schools only work because they define need in a much different way than most schools awarding need based financial aid. Poor kids from OOS cannot attend Cal or UCLA unless they receive merit aid. The California definition of ‘need’ is the FAFSA definition, and even then OOS cannot receive it. That same student can go to Harvard or Stanford, but not Cal. California is okay with serving only poor and middle class from California and rich kids from everywhere else, but California is so big that diversity can be achieved by accepting student from Bakersfield and LA and SF and Merced. Most states can’t do that and want to pull in diversity from OOS students.

We often talk about a need component to some merit awards, but of course there is a huge merit component to the need awards at Stanford and Harvard too - you have to get into those schools to take advantage of the great need based aid programs. Just being poor doesn’t work.

But would Harvard be able to use a need only system if it didn’t define need as including a family pulling in $125k ($150k, $170k) as ‘needy’? If it was a FAFSA definition, and Princeton expected any family making above $50-70k to pay, it would shut out the entire middle class - just like schools that define need by FAFSA standards and don’t provide merit aid do. Can the average family making $90k afford college? Yes, but not any college unless there is merit aid or need based aid with a generous definition of need.

I think colleges need both merit and need based aid because they serve different purposes. I didn’t realize there was a debate about whether to have one or the other, although I know some states are debating how much of each to offer. I don’t see a problem with offering more need based aid than merit. Families who earn ~$100k plus can likely afford college somewhere. It may not be a top 50, but their kid can get a degree. Families who earn less, especially those in lesser served areas, won’t unless we provide some help.

@austinmshauri You misunderstood my post. I think that colleges need to combine merit AND need aid to better serve the high-achieving, low-income students. As it stands now, everyone, regardless of income, receives a paltry merit award if they make a certain ACT/SAT score with a certain GPA. It’s a low threshold that many kids achieve. However, you get almost no money (seriously, I think it’s about $1,000 or $2,000) so it doesn’t help low-income kids by making college affordable. And, for those who can afford it, those kids barely meeting the academic requirements often either drop out due to cost or flunk out due to grades. Rather, I propose raising that minimum academic threshold and then “meeting full need.” The threshold can be whatever the school can afford, but let’s use 32 ACT and 3.5 GPA. A student from a $50K household would receive more aid than the student from a $75K household who would then receive more aid than the student from the $100K household. And, yes, there will be an income amount where students receive no aid. But, all three students would have a better chance at having their financial needs met.

In short, I’m for a system that utilizes both merit AND need to make college affordable for the largest amount of high-achieving students. There is also an economic incentive for the state because it is keeping more attractive students from leaving for more money.

@tutumom2001 …I may still be misunderstanding you. By saying, “And, yes, there will be an income amount where students receive no aid. But, all three students would have a better chance at having their financial needs met.” I understand that as you not supporting a system that supports merit scholarships. A merit scholarship is need-blind – in both directions. By saying that you support a system that combines both, but doesn’t allow for any scholarships (you call it aid) for high-performing students above a certain family income threshold is, in my opinion, not truly supporting merit scholarships at all.

There are already many scholarships of the type you define in the current system. These are merit “honors” to certain schools that are given solely on the benefit of merit, but include financial awards only for those with demonstrated need. I can see how you can see these scholarships as a form of merit/need hybrid, but if they are the only form of merit-based awards you support, then I think you a short-changing a large number of high-performing students and not supporting merit on its own. After all, that merit award is something the student earned, not their parents.

But with the advantages of being upper middle class or higher. Better schools,opportunities, test prep, help with school and college, etc.

Maybe, maybe not. After all, SAT scores correlate to income, parent education, etc. Those are things earned by the parents and that the student is born into.

That’s not to diminish a student’s success, but let’s also not pretend that all children start out with the same opportunities. Merit aid favors high income students and students from well-educated families. Not that there’s anything wrong with that route, necessarily, but success isn’t something that all children can equally achieve.

Personally, I’m way more impressed by the student from the crap school that gets a 32 on the ACT than the upper class prep school kid who got a 34. But that’s just me.