Aid to Students-By Need or Merit? The Case for Merit:
TAYLOR, HUGH
The Case for Merit By Hugh Taylor HIGHER EDUCATION is a critical sector of the total American community effort and never so critical as in the decade we have just entered. It requires...
...The ability to be flexible and experimental, to meet new situations with new solutions, constitutes the virtue of the private programs...
...Let it be assumed that a five-figure income represents a rough line of demarcation between those who should and who should not have educational scholarship and fellowship assistance...
...There were subtractions for children in public or private schools or college...
...There is a consensus that, in this one-third of the population, there are enough with high I.Q.s to justify a diligent search for them...
...It follows that upwards of 94 per cent of the total population filing income tax returns qualifies for educational assistance within the arbitrary income limit just proposed...
...One final query: Would not a considerable expansion of scholarship and fellowship support based on merit be of inestimable value to the country as a whole and constitute one important method of raising the country's relatively low contribution to the educational process...
...In American education there is a place for both private and public scholarship and fellowship programs...
...20, for May 1953...
...Why not frankly concentrate on a scholarship program based on merit, with increasing stipends the greater the merit and a significant supplementary bonus to those in the low income tax groups, progressively decreasing to the vanishing point for those in the five-figure income tax groups, but with no estimates, formulas or financial aidcenters...
...The most sympathetic parent who has generously faced the burdens of an undergraduate training for his child through the 21st year is anxious to be relieved of the continuing financial burden of graduate years, and the student also desires to minimize his burden on the family...
...Given the critical importance of higher education and the enhanced quality of such effort required, it is an obvious national duty to seek out the best qualified students and to provide the necessary stimulus to secure the requisite encouragement for them...
...In the free American society, in contrast to Marxian or welfare state communities, this stimulus has taken the form of liberal scholarship programs and fees considerably below costs...
...Should not the nation, therefore, whether through public purse or private funds, supply the major costs of this critical effort...
...In 1960 the financial needs are even more pressing and the upward spiral of education costs even steeper...
...Anyone who wishes to acquaint himself with the intricacies of scholarship programs operated with financial need as the governing factor should examine a copy of The College Board Review, No...
...Scholarship programs of great magnitude in the private colleges and universities of the country, and tuitions in state universities and colleges at small fractions of the actual instruction costs (therefore requiring tax-support), are ample evidence that the competitive position of colleges with business and industry is frankly recognized...
...It is in this area of the nation's families that enlightened national self-interest suggests that we engage seriously in a search for merit and, when found, should supply not only merit scholarships but also, taking a lesson from our Iron Curtain competitors, a pre-salary...
...This is quite apart from the problem of merit versus need...
...Let us therefore get a feel for the magnitude of the problem with such a five-figure income...
...there it is essential to be selective...
...They should be available to all who attain the level of merit necessary to service adequately the country's needs...
...It found that as many as 84 per cent of all the graduate students receive major support from the university in the form of scholarships, fellowships and assistantships or from outside fellowship support...
...Rather they tend to regard offspring of college age as potential contributors to the financial problems confronting them...
...The final pessimistic note from the Director of the Harvard College Financial Aid Center in 1953 sums up well the inevitable conclusions: "We seem to be gaining ground," he said, "albeit slowly...
...There were other considerations which led to what was called a "family remainder" on which there was a 2 per cent tax...
...What is even more striking in the same income tax returns is that 22,368,656 returns report adjusted gross income, taxable and non-taxable, of $3,000 or less...
...It provides a fixed stipend for each successful fellow, irrespective of his or his parents' financial status, and pays the student's fees at the university of his choice...
...In other words, more than 37 per cent of the returns indicate incomes equal to or less than that required to keep one student in a prestige college or university...
...Admission is governed by merit, personal qualities and motivation in a very competitive selection process...
...The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation recognizes the merit aspect of its fellowships for first-year graduate students...
...There would inevitably be hardship cases, involving special circumstances, with family incomes one or two thousand dollars on each side of the arbitrary line proposed...
...This student is not unlike those sought by American business enterprises which operate training programs, essentially educational in nature, for entering employes and who pay salaries throughout the training period...
...Business executives are intelligent enough not to refuse salaries to good prospective employes simply because their parents happen to have five-figure incomes...
...The recent trends toward larger families and higher costs of education in prestige institutions (nearly $3,000 a year per person) certainly suggest that the line proposed is not too generous in favor of the "haves...
...In this system, merit has been the principal passport...
...The calculated family contribution from a family with an income of $8,000 came out as $1250, $975 and $800 respectively...
...There are additional "estimates" and "formulas" which make dreary and dismal reading...
...The percentage of incomes that can be used to meet such additional burdens in graduate years is probably less than the 6 per cent of our earlier consideration...
...Those favoring need emphasize college education as a capital investment for the children for which the family should pay to the limit of its resources or, as some families already do, beyond their resources, mortgaging their own future...
...It requires the highest quality of both mind and motivation...
...It may be remarked in this connection that the severalfold multiplication of university students in Britain since World War II has been secured principally from such a segment of the British population with municipal, county and state scholarships plus a living allowance for the vast majority...
...But the fellowship is a symbol of scholarly excellence and promise in the recipient...
...Is not an appeal to the generosity of those who "have" preferable to an inquisition among those who "have not...
...In this view, need should be recognized only to provide additional resources for the economically sub-standard recipient, not to assess by cumbersome investigations what is the minimum financial outlay the college needs in order to bring the bright student into their midst...
...Why must education in the college or university, equally essential to the national welfare as in-training programs, be loaded with such a competitive handicap...
...They serve to monitor those public programs which necessarily must operate within a framework of regulations prescribed strictly by the legislation enacted...
...The heads of families in low-income groups such as these cannot be expected to respond with enthusiasm to a call for college or university education...
...But it is in this area of graduate education that the vital and scholarly interests of the nation can be most effectively promoted...
...The claims of merit are, in my judgment, overwhelming...
...The 15 per cent rule is fast and handy, but we were troubled first because it seemed to have no clear relevance to the family's problem and it certainly did not help much on the cases where there were any complications at all...
...Dedication to a college career has to compete with the financial incentives that obviously lie open to every intelligent student who has completed his high school career...
...The coal miner's and the cotton spinner's children have thereby found entry into Oxford and Cambridge...
...We concentrate all our effort on the search for merit...
...It gives supplementary stipends when, through marriage, additional economic burdens are involved...
...this included names and ages of brothers and sisters not yet in school or college, names and ages of other dependents, total income of father and mother, estimated income for the year coming (presumably assuming the prospective wage earners to be still alive during that year), listing of business expenses, assets in the form of real estate holdings, present mortgages, list of savings, value of stocks and bonds, maturity value and cash value of life insurance policies and a statement of indebtedness...
...Particular attention could be directed to Harvard's experience, where financial need was a scholarship "must...
...EVERYTHING THAT HAS been said as to the importance of merit over need at the undergraduate level is even more transparently obvious at the level of graduate training...
...When found, they should be given all the inducements necessary to provide for them a college or university education proportionate to their merits...
...The Internal Revenue Service is responsible for the data concerning individual income tax returns for 1957...
...There is no time left, nor is there any inclination, to start a Dun and Bradstreet agency...
...This recognizes the importance of his status in the Communist state, a status which his intellectual attainments have earned for him...
...There ensued, in 1953, an elaborate reformulation of the problem...
...Thus, Harvard compiled a table of how its normal expectations work out for 1-, 2- and 3-child families...
...No consideration at all is paid to need, beyond a suggestion, which might well be inserted in all scholarship or fellowship appointments, that if the stipend is not required it can be refused, with the student receiving an appointment as honorary fellow...
...There should he no question of need, only of merit, measured in the broadest, most comprehensive terms...
...From 1950-1953 a "15 per cent rule" operated—15 per cent of the net family income was expected as a basic contribution...
...Both types are essential to a free and pluralistic society...
...What this entails can be learned from the experience of the Graduate School of Princeton University, one of the most highly selective graduate schools in the country...
...This basic maintenance was assessed at 12 per cent for one child, 10 per cent for two children and 8 per cent for three...
...Indeed, any type of means test in such a training program would constitute a definite disadvantage to the company practicing such screening procedures...
...For such human assets the competition is especially severe...
...Granted, then, the need for scholarships at the undergraduate level, and still more so the necessity for fellowships at the graduate level, the problem remains as to whether these awards should be on the basis of need or on the basis of merit...
...Those who emphasize merit realize that the family has already made a supreme contribution to the national welfare in the person of the scholarship winner and that this should be recognized and rewarded by an outright gift enabling the scholar, to the limit of his natural abilities, to engage still further in the pursuit of excellence...
...The children in such families thus tend to become educationally underprivileged, and their poor opportunity in life is perpetuated...
...The basic problem of merit versus need in scholarship aid is one of emphasis...
...At the graduate level, one can be free from the problems inherent in mass education...
...There were basic assumptions that "a family is obliged to maintain a child, to provide food, shelter, clothing and so on...
...I shall achieve a good part of my purpose here if I manage to convey to you just how difficult a problem this really is...
...On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the university student not only receives an education but also a pre-salary...
...It certifies that, out of 59,407,673 returns, those with adjusted gross income, taxable and non-taxable, of $10,000 or more numbered 3,490,872, or somewhat less than 6 per cent...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 2
