Explores merit, equality, and college funding

...The effect is felt most immediately by schools that compete directly with the Ivies for students but don't have the endowments to grant across-the-board increases in aid...

...The state doesn't want to use funds on students who will be taken care of at the federal level...

...In this competitive environment, most schools cannot afford the luxury of high principle...

...Previously the schools gathered each year, compared notes on applicants who had been accepted to more than one member of the club, and offered each student a similar financial aid package according to a standard formula...

...That can only be a good thing for the lower-income student who meets Princeton's academic standards in spite of the odds...

...TARA ZAHRA is a freelance writer and graduate student in history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor...

...However, the actions of the Ivies have a wide impact...

...The choice is fairly clear cut...

...At the very least, this might be a call to schools with a sense of social responsibility to direct more resources toward outreach programs in elementary and secondary schools, which would broaden the pool of qualified African-American or Latino applicants, making bidding wars ultimately less necessary...

...Is it helping any particular institution...

...After affirmative action was abolished, minority enrollment at Berkeley declined 47 percent in 1997...

...Whatever they get from the feds is then deducted from their HOPE scholarship...

...Since then several pressures have disrupted that equilibrium...

...But increasingly, that's not good enough...

...In theory, students would also be encouraged to choose a school based on qualities other than the bottom line...

...Those that do adhere to principle are the most elite institutions, where endowments are heftier, the need to attract students is less acute, and wealthier applicants naturally apply...

...It would be a mistake to see the motives of these extraordinarily wealthy institutions as purely nefarious...

...Whereas a recent report from the New York State Higher Education Association shows that nearly half of U.S...

...We have finally opened the doors of college to all Americans," boasted President Clinton in his most recent State of the Union Address...

...The number of students enrolled in fouryear institutions is at an all-time high-14.8 million registered for this fall, up from the record 14.6 million last year (some 65.6 percent of high school graduates enrolled in college in 1998...

...That means that a poor student whose tuition at a public state school is covered by federal aid gets a maximum of $150 a year from the HOPE fund for books (about enough for books for one class at most schools...

...Is the socioeconomic character of this group representative of the neediest African Americans...

...THE STAGE for a shift toward merit aid among elite institutions was set almost ten years ago, when the Justice Department ruled that collusion among Ivy League schools violated antitrust law...

...For example, Louisiana's TOPS program cost taxpayers $62.4 million in its first year— nearly double the expected bill, largely because TOPS added children of the wealthiest third of Louisiana taxpayers to the scholarship rolls...

...Recent trends in financial aid policy promise little hope of reversing these inequities...

...James Traub has suggested in the New York Times Magazine that this was the unintended result of affirmative action's demise in the University of California system...

...In The Shape of the River, Derek Bok and William G. Bowen defend affirmative action by showing essentially that prestige does matter...

...It's not surprising that HOPE recipients come from families 40 percent wealthier than the state average...

...Low-income students and those who are the first in their families to attend college are also less likely to finish their degrees and more likely to attend technical, two-year, and community colleges, exacerbating the gap...

...This is an undeniably positive pressure...

...As things stand, poor white kids get hurt by this system, according to Robin Mamlet, dean of admissions at Swarthmore College, "and all kids that schools feel less inclined to seek out—to a lesser extent, the middle class and upper middle class...

...Do instiDISSENT / Fall 1999 89 tutions have any obligation to poor white or Asian students, or to maintain equity in packaging...

...Only fifty-seven institutions in the country pay no attention to an applicant's need in their admissions process yet meet 100 percent of an admitted student's demonstrated financial need...

...Although it is true that college enrollments are increasing, the 30 percent gap between attendance rates for the richest and poorest Americans has remained stable since 1972, according to a 1999 study from the Institute of Higher Education Policy (IHEP...

...These students wouldn't have qualified for need-based aid...

...Although most of these schools adopted this policy five to ten years ago (if they were ever need-blind), the recent wave of changes in financial aid policy in the Ivy League promises to make this trend more widespread...

...This is the wave accompanying the globalization of the economy...

...Is socioeconomic diversity assumed to be a "freebie" that comes along with ethnic diversity...

...At the same time, the most elite institutions have begun a virtual bidding war for high school academic superstars, with Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth, and Brown all announcing more generous packages in the past two years...

...Bruce Hammond, author of Discounts and Deals at the Nation's 360 Best Colleges, thinks the practice is far more widespread than the numbers suggest...

...James Marisotis, president of IHEP, says that contrary to popular perceptions, "We're seeing very little social mobility...

...Clearly, this is not good news for needy strivers...

...It's a closed set...

...They'll stop building roads before they'll stop funding this program," according to Joseph Savoie, the Louisiana commissioner of education in the Chronicle of Higher Education...

...Although more and more students receive financial assistance, state governments and institutions are facing increasing pressures to replace need-based financial aid, which is based on parental income, with "merit" aid, which is typically based on students' grades and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores...

...But it also forces the question of tradeoffs: Must socioeconomic diversity be sacrificed for ethnic diversity or for attracting the "best" students...

...But affirmative action shouldn't have to end to inspire schools to take steps that will make it less necessary...

...But the forces of competition, middle-class self interest, and the wide-ranging myth of unfettered meritocracy all threaten our chances of making good on these promises...

...If that's not bad enough, the HOPE program is in fact means-tested for the poor...

...The California state legislature authorized almost 38.5 million dollars for outreach programs last year and stipulated that public universities spend an additional 31 million dollars on these initiatives...

...This year it was up 30 percent (from 10.7 percent to 13 percent...

...states increased overall spending on need-based aid last year, growth is slower than in the early 1990s, when there was an average increase of 10 percent annually...

...These merit awards are also put to the more questionable use of "discounting...

...If this group of students is applying to the same fifty to a hundred universities and we all want to enroll them, and we use more and more merit-based aid (or merit-within-need aid) to attract them, that institution that can use the most merit aid will get those students...

...In contrast, admitting Jennifer will cost the institution $20,000...

...But there are twenty-seven schools, including Brown, Smith, Lafayette, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Bowdoin, Oberlin, Johns Hopkins, and Vassar, that now consider need when evaluating at least some portion of their class...

...0 NE WAY OUT of this bind is simply to keep one eye open to need when evaluating applicants...

...Joe Paul Case, dean of financial aid at Amherst College, says that there is an increasing sense of entitlement to merit aid among the middle and upper middle class...

...The vibrant economy provides both governments and institutions a window of opportunity...

...The alternative often seems crueler: many schools admit students regardless of their ability to pay and then don't offer them the aid necessary to attend— a practice known as "admit-deny" in the admissions world...

...The reforms have been based mostly on a students' financial status rather than merit—Princeton, for example, started the frenzy by replacing loans with grants for all students with family incomes under $40,000 per year...

...African-American students admitted to prestigious schools with SAT scores well below their school's average still graduate at higher rates and go on to earn more money, get more advanced degrees, and feel more satisfied with their overall college experience than African Americans or white students with equal scores at lower tier schools...

...They admit students without regard to need until the money runs out...

...If Jennifer and Jason are equal candidates in every respect but that Jason's parents have $20,000 a year to spend and Jennifer's don't, a school can offer him a $5,000 "merit" scholarship, still bringing in $15,000 in tuition dollars...

...Is that such a tragedy...

...At least ten other states are considering similar programs, many of which have no income cap...

...This is largely due to rising tuition costs, with which institutional, DISSENT / Fall 1999 87 state, and federal aid programs have not kept pace...

...The HOPE scholarship, funded by a lottery, provides tuition and fees at all in-state public colleges, or a portion of tuition at in-state private colleges, to all Georgia high-school graduates with a minimum B average in high school who maintain a B average in college...

...But will this national obsession with higher education amount to anything more than an upper middle-class bonus check to itself...

...The same argument should be made about the top five thousand SAT scorers or football players...

...Meanwhile, President Clinton continues to argue for a nationwide HOPE program, and used the label "Hope Scholarship" for his 1998 tuition tax break plan, which also benefited mostly middle- and upper-middle-class families...

...In Georgia, where the merit trend first caught on, financial support for need-based aid fell from $5.3 million in 1994, when the HOPE program began, to $2.2 million in 1997...

...The results are promising...

...We have to ask ourselves, whom are we serving...

...The IHEP report found that over the past two decades, need-based grants have covered a decreasing percentage of the average price of attending college...

...Since only approximately 3 percent of the nation's undergrads attend elite private institutions, the most immediate impact will be felt from changes in the way aid is allocated by state and federal governments...

...The pressure from these practices has reached the Ivy League and elite liberal arts colleges...

...A letter of admission from Harvard (or Vassar, or Berkeley) is a ticket to a world in which everyone has long been expected to succeed, and almost everyone does...

...Of course the most glaring obstacles for these students are not hidden at all: a public school system funded by local property taxes, which prepares students of different socioeconomic backgrounds for different futures...

...90 DISSENT / Fall 1999...

...The implications of those decisions for accessibility to higher education may not be as positive as press releases claim...

...Is it providing greater opportunity for African Americans...

...It's kind of a college mania, with suburban schools sending 70 percent to 80 percent of their students to college," Robert Zemsky, director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times...

...The rise of merit scholarships and preferential packaging and the decline of aid based on need are new hidden barriers to poorer students...

...Then, for the students on the margins, typically between 5 percent and 10 percent of the class, those who can pay get the nod...

...At 88 DISSENT / Fall 1999 Amherst we try and tell them we have recognized your child's merit by admitting him," he says...

...So Georgia high school seniors must apply for federal need-based programs (like Pell grants) before the state will give them a cent...

...Because it was a tax credit, the one-third of all families who are too poor to owe any taxes get nothing...

...If you step back from that process you can ask yourself, is this particular process helping to educate more African Americans...

...THEN AGAIN, if some elite schools abandon need-blind admission or affirmative action, statewide programs choose merit over need, and poor kids, white or black, are edged out of top schools on the margins, they will still get an education—albeit at a less prestigious university...

...It was argued to be a socially responsible cartel—allowing them to distribute aid dollars as widely as possible, instead of engaging in a bidding war for the top candidates...

...Small private institutions that stick to lofty ideals may find their financial existence threatened...

...But the "competition" for diversity is certainly on the minds of admissions officials at top schools, as they attempt to redefine their elite and often white institutional identities...

...But it is exacerbated by the rise of merit aid through immensely popular (and expensive) state programs modeled after Georgia's HOPE Scholarship fund...

...Still, the policies of elite schools are not irrelevant to the issue of social mobility...

...Yet, we have a president who has made educational opportunity and access to college part of the standard stump speech, a matter of national policy on par with any other...

...Taken together, policy changes on both levels reveal a wavering commitment to need as the primary basis for giving out scholarship dollars nationwide, as market incentives infiltrate policy making...

...Lower-tier private universities began using more merit aid to draw top candidates away from Ivy League and magnet public schools...

...Vocational education has been nearly cut in half...

...Other routes into the workforce are withering...

...Will elite institutions that promise to "diversify" reach out or simply further the stratification of American society...

...And yet, they are sacred cows for many politicians because of their popularity with middle-class constituents...

...Carleton's Thibitout offers a hypothetical example of potential perverse results of a bidding war: "Say there are five thousand top AfricanAmerican students in the country...

...If Harvard were to change its packaging it would change the whole system in this country," says Paul Thiboutot, Carleton's dean of admissions...

...These programs give the most to students who need it the least...

...Likewise, students who pay their own way through college—over half of all college students—don't have enough tax liability to qualify...

...Every step of financial aid that moves away from need-based aid with equity in packaging affects everyone in the whole food chain of colleges...

...For these schools the choice is stark: give some students better packages than others (based on "merit"), or maintain equity and see the most desirable students "bought" by rival institutions with bigger endowments...