<p>Mom2 – what I meant to convey was that state Us merit aid should be based on objective criteria. </p>
<p>Yes, there is a difference between donor money and public money. I do hope the donors are informed that the school reserves the right to slant their money to OOS students to even up cost of OOs and IS. Even if OOS are less able, by objective criteria.</p>
<p>In public schools, there should be transparency (in NY, there isnt) and fairness to the taxpayers. If you dont like it, teach/work at a private school. I do not see colleges recognzing the taxpayers.</p>
<p>—It’s not a good idea to have too many laws controlling universities. Universities are not “one size fits all.” Colleges need some flexibility to make decisions which help the schools with rankings and such.—</p>
<p>This is exactly what Indiana University is using the automatic scholarships for-- to increase their rankings. Five years ago, Indiana had the lowest standardized test scores among Big Ten schools, and they were justifiably embarrassed by that. So they brought in a new enrollment manager who instituted automatic scholarships in order to draw high achieving OOS students, which Indiana has succeeded in doing in droves from suburban Chicago. This is reflected in their common data set ACT scores for incoming freshmen. 9.6% of entering ACT composite scores over 30 in 2003-- before automatic scholarships. In 2009, that number was 23.3%. These are likely Illinois students dramatically bringing up ACT scores, as all Illinois kids take the ACT twice in high school and relatively few Indiana students ever take the ACT. Indiana has probably moved up at least three places in the Big Ten in the standardized test scores of incoming freshmen, and this is directly attributable to using automatic scholarships to attract OOS students, in particular from Illinois, where in-state UIUC tuition without scholarships is higher than OOS Indiana University tuition for OOS kids with the highest automatic scholarship. Not only is the Indiana degree relatively more valuable now with stronger incoming classes thanks to the automatic scholarships, the OOS tuitions are probably subsidizing the relatively low cost of attendance ($21,200) for in-state students. Indiana has become a popular school for Illinois and east coast kids to the degree that many come without the automatic scholarships, but the automatic scholarships probably got the ball rolling and helped make IU popular to students from these areas in the first place.</p>
<p>^^Yes and then where do the Indiana kids who are usurped by Illinois kids at IU go? While I “get” the business of it all I still think it’s a vicious zero sum cycle. Reminds me of inner city gentification…you don’t end up with “less” poor overall you just have a game of musical chairs.</p>
<p>I think when a school uses scholarships to get more high stats students on campus, then the school dshould also grow so that instate kids are not shut out.</p>
<p>Unless scholarships are automatic for stats, schools have to us subjective critereia. Most schools don’t have enough money for assured scholarships for stats.</p>
<p>It’s not about business, but about improving standards. If bthomp has it right, then Indiana students are benefiting from having the quality of their state schools increase so that they’ll actually have an in-state option that’s worth pursuing. What’s wrong with that?</p>
<p>If I were an Indiana resident, I’d be cheering at the chance to have a quality in-state option for my kids.</p>
<p>^^^ I’m assuming, of course, that Indiana has multiple tiers of state schools. Is that correct? So that the weak applicants who would be “displaced” from IU would still have access to college?</p>
<p>If that’s the case, then nobody’s losing anything by having a flagship adopt reasonable standards for admission. But the real college-ready students in Indiana stand to gain quite a bit.</p>
<p>I thought about this some more and perhaps you are correct. In Michigan both State and GVSU have definitely benefited in the past decade from the increased selectivity at UofM…the strong gets stronger and the weaker get stronger or something like that.</p>
<p>Indiana has two excellent universities in IU and Purdue, just like Michigan with UM and MSU. But Indiana does not have nearly the in-state high school population of Michigan (or Illinois, which has only one excellent public), and its residents are not very affluent nor composed of great numbers of high achieving hs students. In general, economic affluence and large numbers of high school achievers go hand in hand, and Indiana does not have a lot of either. Take Indiana and Purdue together, and medium achieving in-state students can still find a way into either of these excellent schools. Both schools are in good shape financially, and neither is tremendously reliant on state dollars to operate, so the general assembly in Indiana, with a few exceptions, is content to allow the schools to attract OOS students (about 40% for each school) with automatic scholarships (although Purdue finally cut back on these this year). But no question that both schools are harder to get into today for Indiana kids than it was for their parents. Both schools have very strong business schools with large numbers of Illinois kids that can’t get into UIUC but are nonetheless excellent students who contribute greatly to Kelley’s and Krannert’s (total business school enrollment alone for the two is 7000+, compared to 3,000 at UIUC) national rankings. IU and Purdue, naturally, draw less from Ohio with its giant flagship and Michigan with its two main publics. IU and Purdue each benefit greatly, however, from close proximity to Illinois and being attractive alternatives to UIUC, which is tough to get into (especially for business) and also relatively expensive for an instate public. Indiana’s automatic scholarships have exploited these conditions and Indiana’s schools are benefiting. Indiana’s advantage from Illinois’ distress, so to speak.</p>
<p>I would add that Indiana’s benefit is showing results as it builds up IUPUI. That institution used to be an odd commuter hybrid of our top-tier univeristies. It now offers the automatic scholarships that IU has for students with slightly lower stats. It has been able to improve facilities, add more housing, etc. The biggest problem seems to be that while Indiana has an abundance of excellent public and private colleges (U of Notre Dame, Earlham, DePauw, Wabash, Hanover) the state has a mediocre K-12 program. Fewer AP classes in rural areas, low property taxes equal low funding of schools, horrible college graduation rates for residents, all make the state unattractive to high-tech industry. We have excellent graduates from IU and Purdue, but most leave.</p>
<p>MomofThreeBoys I agree with you about Michigan being more selective helping State and GVSU, since both of those schools are sort of U of M reject schools. State is notorious for that, but GVSU has a lot of U of M rejects, and on the very low end of the applicant pool MSU rejects. Furthermore, I am glad U of M joined the common app and I hope they accept even more OOS students so GVSU can benefit from higher stat in state students. Also, I’ve heard Mary Sue Coleman saying that she wants to decrease the size of U of M which I think is a good idea, and once again it would greatly benefit MSU and GV. As for the Illinois people complaining about the colleges, that stinks but if you want a low cost good value school thats much better than SIU (look it up) than have your son go to GVSU. He’ll pay about $7,500 a year tuition and $7800 room and board after the out of state award for excellence kicks in. Furthermore, GVSU is really increasing the amount of out of state students, so there will be a decent amount of illinois kids at GVSU. So really with universities in Michigan, OOS students benefit from the low state aid to the universities. I wonder how all these schools in the Midwest would be without the Chicago kids?</p>
<p>Hi Mom2,<br>
University of Kentucky, University of Mississippi, Grand Valley State University. Our financial situation is just not going to fit with Alabama, although we wish it would. Bama COA is about 33,000. we have a 17237 EFC, and I think bama will still be about 23-26K. I don’t know why so high of an EFC, we didn’t do so well in 2010. But our accountant did it and so did the schools after verification.</p>
<p>We are also looking at the fact that travel will now be something to consider. From the Chicago area GVSU will be pretty easy.</p>
<p>Update, Just recieved letter From University of Arkansas, 0 scholarship money, Zip, Zilch, nothing. Oh well took a shot, was planning on using Arkansas Scholarship money to try to get a little more out of schools we actually wanted to go to, Back to the drawing board I guess.
Maybe we will have to just resort to begging for some help, Just kidding.</p>
<p>UArk seems to only be generous to students from bordering states. Don’t know why that is since the goal should be to get students from non-contiguous states.</p>
<p>Mom, I dont know why you think goal should be to get kids from non-contiguous states. I dont think state schools should have as a goal anything other than to provide quality education to their own kids, but contingous kids may be more likely to stay in state after graduation.</p>
<p>Because there is some kind of report that colleges do that reports the number of students they have from non-contiguous states. I think that these numbers somehow play into their rankings. </p>
<p>Also, schools like to brag that they have students from all 50 states…it gives them a more diverse appeal. </p>
<p>I dont think state schools should have as a goal anything other than to provide quality education to their own kids</p>
<p>While that is certainly a goal, it usually shouldn’t be the only goal. Unfortunately things like rankings and such play into the situation as well. Getting high stats students on campus is also very important because it has a rolling positive effect on a campus…it’s easier to improve rankings, it’s easier to get hire better profs, it’s easier to get more research grants, it’s easier to get more alumni & corporate donations, etc. </p>
<p>When state schools only focus on educating resident students, the school can stagnate. That’s fine for state schools that are already highly ranked and have strong donors/endowments, but not for publics who want to improve.</p>
<p>I agree that a state university’s primary responsibility is to provide higher education to the state residents. For those states that do not have affordable options in this area, shame on them. I hope tax payers make an issue of the situation.</p>
<p>I also agree that it does improve a university’s quality to have talented students from other states at the school. We see this strikingly in sports programs and few people argue the need to recruit the top athletes in a sport from other states. So it goes with the students. It does enhance the quality of the school. It also can bring diversity to some states that are truly lacking in it It is a balancing act to come up with the proper balance of OOS kids. I wish our SUNY schools had more kids from outside of NY. At the same time, I can see a problem when there are not enough places for instate residences who want to go to a state college.</p>