<p>Here it is. It also showed bar graphs showing that the amount of aid to wealthier students and the percent of wealthier students receiving aid has increased between 1996 and 2004. </p>
<p>Aid for least-needy students
To lure achievers, colleges stress merit-only scholarships.
By Patrick Kerkstra
Inquirer Staff Writer</p>
<p>Lucrative college-scholarship offers are piling up in mailboxes across the country this month, the most generous of them sent to relatively prosperous neighborhoods, such as the Northeast Philadelphia enclave where George L. Weber and his daughter, Lauryn, live.</p>
<p>Weber, a doctor, had hoped Lauryn's outstanding grades and SAT scores might win her a grant to "make our lives a little easier." Instead, seven schools came through with major awards; six proffered full rides.</p>
<p>But while Lauryn, 17, decides which dream invitation to accept, a growing number of critics are questioning the wisdom of such scholarships, also known as "merit aid."</p>
<p>"I have to turn down some financially needy kids because we can't afford to pay their tuition, but at the same time we're giving out $1 million a year to kids who don't need it," said Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment management at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., who is slowly reducing the level of merit aid there.</p>
<p>In the last eight years, college grants to wealthy students grew more than twice as quickly as grants to students with families of modest means, according to federal statistics. Indeed, students with grants in the $100,000-plus bracket - the richest tracked by the federal government - now receive an average of $6,200 apiece, which is more than any other income group.</p>
<p>"The worst part of the story is, that money seems to be going upward, which means that these merit awards have essentially been a boon for people with money," said Richard DiFeliciantonio, vice president for enrollment management at Ursinus College in Montgomery County.</p>
<p>Merit aid does not stop at snaring funds that could be going to financially needier students, critics said. They also say that schools have raised overall tuition rates to cover their bigger merit budgets and that merit aid has led students to choose colleges that offer the best "deal," instead of the best fit.</p>
<p>Perhaps most worrisome, they say, is the way merit aid has fostered what Massa calls the "commodification of higher education." Admissions officers now speak openly of "customers" instead of "students," of "pricing schemes" and "the sticker price."</p>
<p>Admissions officials have developed complicated and opaque tuition structures using merit that, in effect, allow them to raise or lower the cost of college depending on how desirable a given student is. Parents are increasingly wise to that, and more are haggling with admissions officers over the size of their student's scholarship.</p>
<p>"There's a sticker price, but hardly anybody pays it," said Timm Rinehart, Temple University's vice president for enrollment management. "Colleges and universities work like airlines - we set a different price for different customers."</p>
<p>Yet for all that, colleges and universities are virtually certain to distribute more in merit aid this year than last, continuing a two-decade trend.</p>
<p>Until the 1980s, virtually all colleges and universities awarded scholarships based almost exclusively on financial need. But by the early 1990s, struggling schools - Ursinus was one at the time - were rapidly expanding their merit programs to attract students who were enrolling elsewhere.</p>
<p>At many colleges, the strategy worked. Soon, rivals of Ursinus, such as Dickinson, felt compelled to offer merit grants of their own. Similar scenarios played out in markets across the country. Even public schools got into the game.</p>
<p>"We very deliberately changed our financial-aid strategy and went from being almost totally need-based into putting all our new financial-aid money into merit," Temple's Rinehart said.</p>
<p>Although Temple has not pumped up its merit-aid budget in several years, he said the move had played a valuable role in getting top students to take a closer look at the school.</p>
<p>"If you're an institution like Temple that needs to improve its academic image and reputation, you want to give a family a reason to choose you. You want them to be able to say at a party: 'We chose Temple. It's a good school, and, you know, they gave our kid a scholarship,' " Rinehart said.</p>
<p>Massa considers that little more than buying better students - something he has down to a virtual science.</p>
<p>"Look, I know that to increase my SAT profile by five points costs $1,000 per student - for five lousy points," Massa said.</p>
<p>Only elite colleges and universities, such as those in the Ivy League, have been immune to merit-aid pressure. Parents and students who can afford those schools are willing to pay full tuition, and grants are still based almost entirely on need.</p>
<p>But outside those select institutions, merit scholarships have become ubiquitous. At St. Joseph's University, for instance, a B+ GPA and an SAT score close to the national average will net an "Achievement Scholarship" of up to $28,000. La Salle grants $16,000 to any applicant with a C+ average who graduated from a local Catholic high school.</p>
<p>"The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no way we can put it back in," said Robert Voss, dean of admissions at La Salle.</p>
<p>Which is fine by students and parents receiving the awards. The cost of a college education - now averaging $20,000 a year for tuition alone at private schools - is enough to tax the resources of almost any family, even relatively well-off ones such as the Webers.</p>
<p>"Unless you're Trump, the scholarships matter. We would do whatever was necessary, but obviously this makes it a lot easier to pay for the next two [children]," said Weber, who was surprised to find that by colleges' calculations his daughter would not qualify for need-based aid.</p>
<p>"They say we had no need. A family practice in Philadelphia isn't a cakewalk anymore."</p>
<p>Indeed, merit grants have become so politically popular among the middle and upper-middle classes that 27 percent of taxpayer-funded undergraduate grants made nationwide are now based on scholarship instead of need, according to a 2002-03 survey by the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs. Pennsylvania is one of 20 states that base undergraduate grants purely on need. New Jersey makes some merit grants, but the vast majority go to students with low family incomes.</p>
<p>That is smart public policy, said Lara Couturier, a higher-education consultant.</p>
<p>"When we give merit aid to the middle class, we affect their quality of life - whether they go on vacation that year or get a new car," Couturier said. "When we don't give that aid to lower-income students, it affects whether they go to college at all."</p>