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And then David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, told the group that hed had a series of preliminary conversations in which officials of the U.S. Justice Department had expressed a willingness to review (and potentially bless) accords in which colleges would agree to take common steps to reduce non-need-based aid that would result either in increased financial aid for students or lowered tuition prices (or both).</p>
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<p>There is fairly widespread agreement that the rapid expansion of financial aid awarded based not on financial need but on academic (as well as athletic and racial/ethnic) grounds, and frequently to attract students who are able to afford tuition but whose families won't pay full freight, has undermined the traditional conception of financial aid as a tool to make college possible for students who couldn't otherwise afford it.
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<p>The reason the Justice Department would need to bless an accord is that a group of colleges agreeing to ban merit aid can be regarded as collusion.</p>
<p>Students with affluent and well-educated parents, the so-called "privileged", get higher grades and test scores on average and are more likely to qualify for merit scholarships. That makes "merit" politically incorrect, and the article mentions that some colleges want to ban the term "merit aid". Colleges with an egalitarian mindset want to consider only family income when setting tuition. Too much money is already being spent on students who are not college material, and shifting aid from merit-based to need-based will accentuate that.</p>
<p>Good gravy! Nugent frets and its “frustrated” about the “merit wars” and worries about all this pesky competition getting in the way the economics of her social engineering. </p>
<p>They came for TheAffluent Top 400 and I say nothing, because I wasnt one
They came for TheAffluent Top 1% and I say nothing, because I wasnt one
They came for TheAffluent Top Decile and I say nothing, because I wasnt one</p>
<p>Merit aid is a wonderful way for a college to attract the best and brightest to their honors programs etc. and is something that I feel should be expanded not reduced. The middle class is currently in a tight squeeze - with rising costs (taxes, housing, etc.) and stagnant income, but are typically ineligible for financial aid. With NMSF and other available, merit aid, they can send their high performing students to good colleges without incurring unreasonable debt. The college also benefits by having higher admission statistics (thus increasing their rankings and prestige).</p>
<p>cross posted with arbbargy - love your peom!</p>
<p>I want to add that the purpose of aid is not just to make college available to those who might not attend at all but to make it affordable to those who would.</p>
<p>Some colleges have done this. Franklin & Marshall is an example, they gave up all merit aid a couple of years ago, and only give need based aid. We had them on D2’s list to visit as a possible safety, as she is interested in the sciences. Her older sister went to Dickinson, just up the road and fairly comparable, with a good merit scholarship. Older sister got into some higher ranked school, but really liked Dickinson and decided it wasn’t worth paying more for the higher ranked schools. We figured the same COULD happen with D2 and F&M. However, when F&M pulled merit aid, we pulled it from her visit list. They have NO chance to get my NMSF second kid without discounting the price (since that is what merit aid does). A couple other comparable schools ARE on her list, and she will consider the price/quality comparison this spring depending on merit aid from them. If the price was the same, why would I pay for F&M if she got into someplace like U of Chicago (which she did, EA)?</p>
<p>We scratched all schools that didn’t offer merit aid from our list (including F&M, though we visited anyway). I’m glad we’ll be through the college ages before any change takes place en mass. Right now there are plenty of good schools with merit aid opportunities, so scratching off those that don’t was a no-brainer for us.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t encourage a top athlete to consider schools without athletic scholarships either - so long as there remain good schools with them. </p>
<p>Nice noise. But it hasn’t been the trend when it has come to action. A number of need only schools have added merit awards, not the other way around, and preferential packaging is rampant even at schools that give need only awards and those saying they are need blind in admissions. If you can afford to pay for the whole amount and are not applying for aid, there are a slew of schools that will like that and throw a few grand in merit sweetners to get that. They want to get the most for their money.</p>
<p>As for top athletes, the way it works is that they often will can get into schools where they would not have much or any of chance due to the very strong recruited athelete hook, some of which have no athletic scholarships or won’t give the student one. Around here, there is a lot of that happening. I know kids at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, GT, BC to name a few, not getting any athletic scholarships and turning down awards at lesser known schools where they were offered money.</p>
<p>if they are private schools, it is their choice. that said, atheltic scholarships should be dropped. (a full ride for swimming,track,soccer etc… is a waste of $$$)
sure a u of ketucky basketball scholarship or one for u of michigan football… I understand but, the rest
IMO should go towards academic scholarship.</p>
<p>I do have to agree that there are some colleges adding merit aid. Kenyon beefed up theirs this year. I think Mt. Holyoke has made some increases in their merit aid pool since my older D applied several years ago, too.</p>
<p>Are these colleges willing to end all preferential aid packaging? All the students that check those boxes and meet institutional goals? All the wish list admits?</p>
<p>If they are indeed going blindly to a need based only system they will end up with a very unbalanced class. The very needy students receiving aid, and the wealthy who do not and don’t need it. The middle class who are deemed ‘able to pay’ often times can’t (it’s not a matter of priorities, they’ve had job loss that ate up retirement funds, medical bills, lost money on primary real estate, etc). These families are very cautious and loan averse. They will advise their high achieving student to follow the money to merit awards elsewhere, or a state university.</p>
<p>They are overvauluing what they have to offer. They do this in their pricing and they will really do this if they eliminate merit aid. But, hey, they ought to give it a shot.</p>
<p>I think the outcome would simply be an eventually lowered COA, after what they will consider to be a baffling drop in apps from middle class families. </p>
<p>I did see a suggestion, however, that public universities lower the prices of attendance to the level of the pell for students recieving the pell. I think this would be a really excellent idea, personally.</p>
<p>It would be a shame to drop merit aid. There are some excellent students in the donut hole situation. We would lose some of the best students if colleges were to do away with merit aid. FA calculation is very rigid and doesn’t take into many factors into consideration, which make many families not eligible for FA. By giving out merit aid, it motivates students to take more control of their college application process and not be as dependent on their family financial situation, and it also allows some colleges to attract top students that they wouldn’t otherwise get.</p>
<p>I think it is unrealistic to expect families making 150-250K to be full pay for multiple kids. Yes, they could find schools they could afford, but I think they should have access to some of the best schools also if they have the stats.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with a step that might actually lower tuition prices?</p>
<p>It’s interesting that merit aid has increased over the past 30 years, at the same time we see tuition has skyrocketed. Might merit aid be contributory to this?</p>
<p>Isn’t this all part of that ‘raise tuition and then discount for certain students’ mentality that many see as unsustainable? But you see, it isn’t just low income students that the tuition discount has applied to. </p>
<p>The article notes that it doesn’t change whether higher income students go to college, it just changes where they go to college.</p>
<p>So maybe it will force colleges to price better, since they don’t want to lose higher income families to other institutions?</p>
<p>And lastly, many of the best schools have no merit aid at all.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse - my D did this exact thing at Wellesley - she was totally in the ballpark to admit anyway, but it was the best school she got into and turned down some substantial merit at other schools for W - Being near Boston was also a huge factor for her.</p>
<p>This argument implies that there is no holistic approach to these merit awards. They don’t have to be given to students with affluent well-to-do parents. If they are concerned that is happening, they should look at their own policies. While there is certainly some automatic merit aid, many top merit awards are still competitive, and can be directed to the more needy students through a holistic process.</p>
<p>Note also that their numbers may be a bit skewed - many of those student who got merit aid would have qualified for need based aid, had they not gotten the merit aid, and some ended up with both because the merit aid didn’t meet their need.</p>
<p>If you consider financial aid need in merit it is no longer merit. Merit is only merit if it is based solely on the student’s merits (scores, grades, ecs, etc.) Forget holistic - then it just becomes glorified financial aid and out of the reach for many top students.
Many schools lower merit aid based upon financial aid - the opposite of what is stated by CTSCOUT - they use the merit aid to meet costs not met by financial aid. (Places like Fordham do this - requiring a FAFSA so that financial need is met before any of their merit awards.)</p>
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