Aid to Students-By Need or Merit? The Case for Need:

...Consider a college having applications from boys ranking first, fifth and tenth in a school's graduating class...

...But the rapid increase in the use of student loan funds from private sources, and the appearance of vast public funds from the National Defense Education Act and various state and local loan programs, have made this confusion unimportant...

...The answer is that the opportunity for an education is a reward in and of itself, whether it is made possible by the family's earnings or savings, by financial aid from a college, or from an outside source...

...The boy ranking fifth doesn't quite qualify for one of the top awards, and gets nothing if he has no financial need...

...There is money on hand for research projects and graduate assistantships (both, again, payment for services rendered), or to encourage the able college graduate to go into a particular field, such as college teaching...

...An effort which will uncover and encourage this student is the sort of talent searching which is absolutely necessary...

...Probably fewer than 20 per cent of the families in this country can afford to pay the full cost of a college education for their children...

...But it is really more often an indication of the poverty of the neighborhood...

...As I stated at the beginning, the award of financial aid on the basis of need, be it by an institution, outside foundation or branch of Government, is pretty well accepted by most financial aid officers...

...Perhaps graduate financial aid is really different...

...Yet a large proportion of the abler students—there are as many estimates as there are criteria...

...But this acceptance is coming...

...methods have been standardized so that awards usually vary only to the extent that college costs vary...

...There are other more constructive ways of attracting attention to worthwhile students...

...There was little inducement for anyone, bright or dull, who did not have both the family educational tradition and the money, either to finish school or to plan on college...

...This clamor has been intensified by "competing with the Russians" in turning out more and various kinds of "technical intelligentsia," and also by awareness that new elements in our own technological progress—space research, atomic energy, automation—require more highly trained and various people to deal with them...

...The following articles explore the dilemmas as seen by those who must deal with aid to students...

...I would limit the allocation of financial aid to those who have demonstrated superior ability and promise, and base the amount of such aid on the student's financial need...

...Many colleges have used scholarships as rather powerful levers to attract students with superior qualifications to their campuses...

...Some colleges consult one another before notifying common candidates of stipends, so that small differences may be eliminated...

...Many college professors continue to think that a scholarship should recognize excellence...

...In fact, in these days of competitive admissions to college, there should be sufficient recognition in simplygaining admission to a first-class institution...

...Efforts have been made to combine the two systems by giving honor awards, often with large stipends, to the most desirable students, and giving grants on financial need to those students above a certain academic level...

...There is no encouragement for him to do anything but continue with his vocational course and hurry after school to the necessary job in the grocery store which kept him from participating in those extracurricular activities which might have brought him to the attention of a college talent scout...

...They are likely to lose sight of the fact that it was not always so, and that there are those who disagree...

...He can look forward to getting financial assistance, and will readily accept the fact that he will be expected to assume some responsibility for his education by working and by borrowing against his future earnings...

...There is no real problem of identification or motivation, as there is with high school students heading toward college...

...Just as the income tax has been accepted, so has the concept of need as the basic factor in determining aid, though here also there remains some quibbling with administrative details...

...But what about the son of a day laborer from the wrong side of the tracks...

...As a case in point, professional schools which require a bachelor's degree for admission have much less financial aid available than other graduate schools...

...Almost without exception, strong colleges have discontinued, or are discontinuing, these programs, and are shifting to awards based upon need...

...There has even been a halfhearted attempt to base athletic awards on financial need, though this has not yet met with widespread success...

...But this is not presented as an argument...

...it is fair to say half—are not going on to college to develop their talents...

...Why not give him money, publish his picture and allow him to continue to reap benefits through a college education (which he probably would have got anyhow...

...Jobs, which pay for services rendered (some colleges add to the confusion by calling jobs by some such name as "work scholarships...

...This is just "more of the same injustice" the boy has learned to expect...

...Although there has been some improvement in recent years, the annual appearance of scholarship "thermometers" in high school corridors, recording the amount of aid won by members of the senior class, is an indication that this amount is taken to be a reflection of the school's academic excellence...

...Here again there is some semantic confusion, since in the past some colleges and foundations have called loans "scholarships...

...Similarly, as the development and refinement of public secondary schools have continued in this century to the point where most students finish high school and an everincreasing proportion of these graduates continue into higher education, it has become necessary not only to find more money for financial aid but also to assure its efficient use...

...The mere presence on the campus of these students will lead others like them to apply...

...The growing expense of a college education today, and the increasing emphasis on its importance, has been accompanied by a rising clamor for more and better scholarship and aid programs to students...

...Scholarship thermometers in school corridors remain, but these red-stalked weeds are fading...

...In most discussions of financai aid policy, practices in graduate schools are usually mentioned, and then dismissed with the unchallenged remark, "That's a different situation...

...What encouragement is there for this boy when he sees that the banker's son has been awarded a scholarship which will pay all of his expenses in college...

...All these agencies have learned to estimate with a high degree of equity the amount a family may be expected to contribute to a student's support, and most awards are based on this estimate...

...I prefer a more human approach to the same destination, and wish to emphasize the individual's right to the fullest possible development of his own talents...

...There is no denying that this has been beneficial, though this bidding for brains has had no lasting effect—except when the college's program has been of sufficient quality to challenge the students it bought, and in these times a college with a strong program will naturally draw good students without artificial devices...

...Though the main emphasis has been technical and quantitative—that is, how many engineers, physicists, doctors we will graduate in 1965—there has also been still small voice inside and outside educational circles which has asked about the qualitative—that is, how informed, creative and disciplined are those we do graduate...

...Similarly, when only a small portion of the population graduated from high school, and an even smaller group went on to college, few people worried about financial aid...

...The student whose family has a strong educational background, and which is probably the one family in five that can pay for a college education, is likely to be the one who will excel in his school work, distinguish himself by being elected to positions of responsibility and have free time for extra-curricular activities...

...These parents are likely to be among the best educated and most vocal, with a majority from the ranks of business and professional leaders...

...Even if his family cannot pay all of the costs, a college education has always been assumed...

...And what about the boy ranking fifth...

...Here, by and large, the schools have had little difficulty in finding all the qualified students they can take...

...There lingers some desire, even among this group, to utilize the public relations aspects of their awards, and this vestige of the past is the biggest stumbling block to greater public acceptance of the need criterion...

...They are written by Ben F. Cameron Jr., Southern Regional Director of the College Entrance Examination Board—who presents the case for need—and Sir Hugh Taylor, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation at Princeton—who presents the case for merit...

...The job remaining is one more of education than of justification...

...The general conception of need as the basis for the allocation of financial aid evolved in much the same manner as did the graduated Federal income tax...

...This is the lad who is most likely to attract attention, and to win a scholarship if the grant is made without regard to financial need...

...The poor man, in fact, was likely to make do with a cloth cap and a jug of moonshine...

...But nearly 40 per cent of the high school graduates are now going on to college, and that proportion will soon pass 50 per cent...

...Parents of bright students, too, want recognition for their children, and often in terms of monetary awards...

...They are influenced both by their most recent educational experience—probably in graduate school where little attention has been paid to financial need in allocating awards—and by their understandable desire to see their favorite students recognized and rewarded...

...Why should this same process not be extended to the student who has excelled in high school...

...Instead, if he remains in school beyond the compulsory school-attending age, he is likely to take a vocational course because his goals have not been set higher...

...Bidding for brains continues, but its importance has declined...

...IN OPENING I spoke of financial aid and then scholarships...

...The Case for Need By Ben F. Cameron Jr...

...The battle is not completely won, but it is in its final stages...

...As used here, and by more and more colleges, financial aid consists of the total of all monetary concessions made to a student...

...This will not work...

...Much of the confusion which remains in the field of financial aid is due to these colleges...

...in most cases they can dangle promises of increased later earnings instead of dangling fellowships and scholarships...

...The tax still cannot be regarded as popular, but few will argue that the idea is unfair, no matter how they quibble with administrative details...

...their families do not expect to extend support over three or four more years...

...Our resources are too limited, and our needs too compelling, to allow us to continue to lavish financial aid funds unwisely...

...Actually, graduate schools are in rather frenzied competition for a supply of talent which has been limited by the loss of superior students between high school and college...

...It is in these professional schools that need is now being considered much more widely than in graduate schools...

...In today's climate, college financial aid officers usually assume as axiomatic that funds at their disposal should be allocated on the basis of financial need...

...If we believe in freedom of opportunity, and regard college as an opportunity, this is the course we must follow...

...When the Federal Government was able to pay 90 per cent of its bills out of tariff income, and could depend on a few other taxes on such items as alcohol and tobacco to make up the rest, no one was particularly concerned that rich and poor alike had to pay the same tax in buying an imported hat or a bottle of bourbon...

...His reaction, and the school's, are both obvious and unpleasant...

...Most financial aid officers are familiar with colleges which have operated prize scholarship programs...

...A schohrship is still defined in most dictionaries as a monetary award given in recognition of excellence...

...Another group which clings to the old conception of a scholarship is that of the secondary school teachers, administrators and school superintendents (the last are probably the hardest to change) who naturally want to cling to any tangible evidence that they are doing well the job for which there is seldom much recognition or thanks...

...Traditionally a young man is expected to start earning a living at about the time he finishes college and a young woman usually gets married...

...In the first place, a significant number of those receiving honor awards will not need assistance, and financial aid funds which will be badly needed farther down the line are used inappropriately...

...However, I do not find this argument at all compelling...

...The "American way" has been to reward superiority with a high salary, public recognition or at least the opportunity to choose a particular way of life...

...In these programs it is a basic premise that a student should be allowed to choose his college rather than his stipend...

...There is another aspect of the use of scholarship funds which must be considered...

...There is no logical reason why a college should reward or recognize an applicant's attainments in secondary school or the hereditary accident that may have given him a more agile brain than most of his fellows...

...Not only progress but survival itself demands the fullest possible development of this talent...

...The boy ranking first receives an honor award, though he has no financial need...

...Thus it is easy for a financial aid officer to step into an atmosphere where almost all funds allocated to undergraduates are distributed on the basis of financial need, and to find in this fact sufficient justification for the arrangement...

...Scholarship denotes, in the old sense, an award for excellence...

...An argument for the conservation of talent for the nation's growth and survival is compelling...

...The boy ranking tenth does not qualify for an honor scholarship, but he does need help, and gets it...

...Proliferation of various aid and scholarship programs has, therefore, been built on an implied, and sometimes stated, difference of opinion on the purposes of such aid—the difference between helping the meritorious or the needy (though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive...

...Second, and more important, such a scheme perpetuates the old idea of a scholarship as recognition and reward, and thereby perpetuates confusion...

...There are, however, some notquite-so-strong institutions which continue the programs, and give them loud publicity...

...let me define these terms...

...Parental and social attitudes have already handicapped him to such an extent that, by the time he has reached high school, even though he may have the natural ability to do good college work and to be a contributing citizen later, he is not likely to prepare himself for college...

...As the Federal Government assumed greater financial obligations, and had to look for other resources, the 16th Amendment was adopted and a graduated income tax came into being...

...I would not limit such awards to those with the greatest ability and promise for that would miss most of those who have the greatest need for both financial assistance and spiritual encouragement...

...It was tacitly assumed that one who went to college could pay for it...

...In opening its pages to this debate, The New Leader hopes to stimulate further response to an important and complicated problem which is part of the American ideal of continuing social enfranchisement of the masses of people through the medium of education...

...On the other hand, if it is an accepted fact in the community (as it is coming to be) that financial aid will go to the student who needs help, and who has shown ability and promise, then good counseling at an early age will have a much better chance of steering the bright lad who lacks cultural advantages into a course which will prepare him for college...

...Loans, which must in some way, and at some time, be repaid...

...But such a system should be morally and logically defensible, and I will collect and present some of these defenses here...

...It becomes advisable here to make explicit a basic assumption of my argument...

...Though I am convinced that financial aid at the graduate level will be concerned more and more with financial need, I am not nearly as disturbed about current practices among graduate schools, and among outside sponsors at the graduate level, as I would be were the same thing taking place to a significant extent at the undergraduate level...

...Only teachers and preachers among the professional group are likely to have incomes small enough to qualify their children for aid based on financial need...

...It may be made up of any combination of these three categories: • Grants (often called scholarships), which are any gifts of money requiring no services or repayment...

...It is completely natural that the boys, their parents, their teachers and the home-town newspapers should not differentiate between the awards going to the first and tenth boys, no matter how hard the college has tried to spell out a difference...

...This argument from the standpoint of expediency is, however, much less compelling than one based on morality...

...most are so new at the game that they do not even remember another scheme...

...The most advanced undergraduate financial aid programs in this country and abroad, whether administered by colleges, foundations or various levels of Government, now consider that the primary responsibility for financing a college education is the family's, regardless of the genius of the offspring...

...From this one may say simply that financial aid to those who need it to attend college is necessary, and therefore right...

...the use of scarce financial aid funds for this purpose is just misguided laziness...

...Much has been made in recent years of the fact that America's most important natural resource is its human talent...

...All else is called financial aid...

...There are many reasons why (an important one is certainly motivational, which can be attacked only through intelligent elementary school guidance), but the one most often given is financial...