 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
We have seen a shift in recent years towards rewarding academic performance... bones thrown to middle-class taxpayers... and schools engineering their enrollment to fit trendy academic profiles... |
|
The Need vs. Merit Debate by David Sheridan, Dean of Enrollment Services, Stevens Institute of Technology NASFAA has recently focused considerable attention on the issue of re-emphasizing need as the primary criteria for the awarding of financial aid. I applaud their stand on this issue. We have seen a shift in recent years towards rewarding academic performance (merit scholarships), bones thrown to middle-class taxpayers (Hope Scholarship/Lifetime Learning) and schools engineering their enrollment to fit trendy academic profiles ("Where does US News & World Report rank us?"). Assisting those who otherwise would be unable to attend for financial reasons may get lost in the process. On many campuses, the Financial Aid Office has little, if any, influence regarding enrollment goals and limited authority to set policy on how those goals are attained. Many on my campus with far more political power than me - the Board of Trustees, the President, Vice Presidents, alumni donors, faculty - want to see higher SAT scores and similar standard measures of achievement. Our institutional money is split pretty evenly between merit- and need-based; my personal preference would be to steer the money towards those with need, but our Board of Trustees has little interest in the basic tenets of need analysis when it comes to the school's prestige and perceived value. So I can fight a fight that I have zero chance of winning, or I can work within the system my bosses have put in place. Most of the merit scholarship recipients have need anyway. This isn't news. You can hear the same story from who knows how many other colleges. But we must be careful not to allow this to become a wedge within the aid community. I was once at a conference session on that dirty word, "Leveraging." A well-respected, veteran Director from a prestigious private college (in another part of the country) that awards only need-based aid got up and angrily berated those of us whose schools also have merit-based aid because "you've all allowed the people in Admissions to take this process away from you." Thanks for your opinion, but I still like collecting a paycheck. I wonder what he'd do if his boss came to him and said that, starting today, a 1350 SAT score equaled a $10,000 scholarship because the President said so. Quit? But speaking to NASFAA membership about the importance of need-based aid is preaching to the choir. The message must go to other higher education groups, probably starting with NACAC (Nat'l Ass'n of College Admissions Counselors). These are the people we need on our side of this issue in order for it to gain momentum. Admissions Officers get their strokes by admitting the "right students," often meaning high academic achievers who will cost the school as little money as possible. And the message desperately needs to go out to college presidents. Otherwise we as a higher education community are going to be ill equipped to educate what demographics show to be the next generation of students on our campuses. And to a certain extent, the enemy lies within. US News & World Report is a NASFAA Conference vendor every year. I would contend that their "ratings guide" approach has much to do with the predicament in which we find ourselves. They seduce readers into believing that colleges can be rated and ranked like cars or DVD players on a handful of familiar criteria, recognizing our society's thirst for brand name prestige and shortcuts to making decisions. This has lead many colleges to formulate aid policy based not on what will best serve students or society but what will move the college up in the magazine's rankings. Failure to do so (or so it's feared) will result in empty seats or inferior SAT scores, along with unhappy Presidents, trustees, faculty and alumni. And it goes way beyond aid policy. A recent Washington Post article discussed some colleges' recent efforts to market themselves among peers, since peer ratings play a huge role in US News & World Report's extremely unscientific ranking system. Being that I have the deceptively impressive-sounding word "Dean" in my title, I receive a lot of this marketing junk mail, some of it from schools already very well known. Too bad the money these schools spend on mailing me viewbooks and CD-ROM's can't go towards helping their students. And too bad for them I don't get a vote in US News & World Report, I guess. The "college ranking" issue remains one of US News and World Report's best selling issues each year, so they have no impetus to change anything they're doing. But I believe that NASFAA needs to take a serious look at its relationship with US News and World Report, and the need-based message needs to be spread way beyond the aid community. In the meantime, if your school awards merit-based aid, don't let anyone make you feel guilty that what you're practicing isn't "pure" financial aid. This is a dynamic field - we never sit still. Much of the philosophy behind need analysis was instituted at a time when most colleges were filled with full-payers, the government played no role, need analysis actually measured what a family could afford to pay, and no prospective freshman's parents asked about the average SAT score and class rank for the second and third quartiles of the admitted class. And face it, the academic scholarship genie is out of the bottle. I don't think it's going to be easy to get him back in, not very soon at least. Times change, schools change and students change, all of which means that need-based aid may come back in vogue again someday. I mean, who ever thought that bell bottoms would come back? You don't have to pull out your 1972 wardrobe again, but be someone who can keep up with the changes.
|
|
