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Money for Merit

You worked so hard in high school. You joined every club and did all your homework. You succeeded in your attempt to go to college. But why won't Oregon Hall give you any money? "Sorry. Wrong genes."

Thousands of students, whether they be returning or high school seniors, try to obtain merit money from the State of Oregon every year. Thousands of eligible students apply for around 100 nickel-dime scholarships all over the state. The only public school-sponsored scholarship available, the Presidential Scholars Program, invites 400 students to apply. There is money for less than 100. After a certain number of elimination rounds: SAT scores, GPAs and extracurricular activities, one student is no longer distinguishable from another. After a certain number of elimination rounds, academic merit is no longer part of the criteria.

That is what is ugly about the system. You work hard and you get good grades, but you get no reward.

For the student who has a 3.85 GPA and a 1200 or better on their SATs, but gets no help for their college education, it certainly seems that way. While merit money does exist, it is in the form of private endowments with specific requirements and small awards that barely put a dent in the cost of education. "It is limited," Carole Thalman, a high school counselor in Hillsboro said. "You have to make some compromises."

The State of Oregon Scholarship Commission does its best to make sure that students who need assistance receive some help in paying for school, primarily with the state need-grant program for low-income students. The average award is $1000 per year and the award is "targeted the same way as the [federal] Pell grant, only the Pell grant provides more than the state can," said Douglas Collins, executive director of the scholarship commission. "The state provides $12 million per year for that program, and that's a sizable amount."

The federal Pell Grant made up over half of the federal spending on education last fiscal year. The rest of the over $13 billion was spent on special interest areas of study and need--none of them for bright, middle- income students. "Had it [the Federal Pell Grant] kept up with inflation and been fully funded, the highest award would be $5000. Today it is $2300," said Collins.

"The criteria begins with an assessment of what the parents and the student should be contributing to the cost of their education," said James Beyer, director of the grant program at the Scholarship Commission. If, however, the parents refuse to contribute anything to the cost of their children's education, "that puts the student in a super-tough position.

"The student may be able to borrow a small amount, but by and large that student would be locked out of any aid. The institution is not in a position to legally help them either, unless there is documented estrangement and an aid administrator makes a professional decision," said Beyer.

For students, most of whom are legally responsible for the debt they incur in the process of taking out numerous and interest-accruing loans, it is their parents' income that can hurt them most. Whatever the equation being used by the federal and state governments, and private trusts, it does not take into account parents' mortgages, other siblings, medical bills or parents who do not value a college education as much as their children do.

Apart from the need-based grant, the Commission also coordinates and publishes a list of scholarships that come from private sources, "people who bequeath money, and industry. The majority of the awards are private bequests, although the largest dollar volume is from private industry," said Collins. "They come to us. We were thinking for awhile that we should get a public relations person to go out and dig up business, but we can barely handle what we've got." While every dollar of those endowments and bequests is worth the effort it may take to get it, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for students to qualify for them.

Many scholarships are memorial funds with specific areas of research or study as the major criteria. But for your average English or Political Science major, the search for scholarships and academic grants is rarely rewarding.

The search is downright discouraging when students discover that they are not poor enough to qualify or are not ethnic enough to qualify for supposedly academic scholarships. Somehow, when no one was looking, genetics became part of the criteria of a student's academic profile.

This past March, out of a sampling of 24 scholarships, all but seven listed financial need as part of the criteria in the summary. Six included a requirement regarding the parents' vocations or health conditions, four included racial criteria, two were based on gender, 11 specified a course of study or vocation, and only two appeared to be based on academic performance in high school alone. The bottom line in education, as in everything else, is the bottom line.

With runaway inflation of tuition costs, no family can adequately plan ahead for their children's academic and financial futures. With only 12 months or less between notification of tuition costs and the beginning of fall term, saving and borrowing becomes a risky venture for most middle- class families. "I believe this year and next year the increase in tuition will be about seven percent," said Beyer. "I would predict that tuition will continue to increase. I don't see anything that will slow that."

"Students are indebting themselves more and more for their education. At what point will students decide that it is not worth it to go to college when they cannot afford that kind of debt? More students will forego degrees that require more education for careers that are not high- paying, like teaching, because the cost of the debt outweighs the salary after graduation," said Collins.

"In general, college costs have historically, since about 1980, risen at a rate that has always exceeded inflation," said Beyer.

Not unlike health care costs, the cost of education has increased at a rate higher than inflation primarily because most state colleges have experienced a significant decline in the state subsidization of higher education. Many students must choose not to attend school, putting themselves at a disadvantage later when very poor students and very wealthy students beat them to post secondary degrees, and later, to high-paying careers.

In the January 27, 1995 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, James B. Appleberry, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and C. Peter Magrath, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges were quoted in a letter to Congress as saying: "The main response to the depleting state of discretionary funds available to public colleges and universities has been to cut services and raise tuition. The subsequent tuition increases force students to either borrow greater amounts or to forego a post secondary education."

While the academic counselors were promising students fame and fortune if they made high marks and took tough classes, they were also promising students a future full of opportunities. Repeatedly, high school students hear that once they have a post secondary degree, it is a buyer's market for jobs. At the end of senior year, when all of those bright and hard-working students find that they did not get a dime, counselors and bureaucrats shrug their shoulders and lament the ills of the system. Nowhere can a student find real answers about his academic future.

Likewise, colleges are uncertain about their own fiscal futures. Colleges and universities have found that as their tuition increases, they yield ever-smaller net revenues. According to the September 1994 issue of USA Today Magazine, at Cornell University, "For every $100 increase in tuition and fees, about $37 goes for increased student aid." That is, when you pay increased tuition, a full third of the increase will likely go to aid another student who can afford school even less.

Further, not having every open slot filled by a paying and assisted student costs significantly more than when operating costs are spread over a larger number of students, said USA Today. Schools are in just as much peril from lack of funds as lack of students.

Since the midterm elections, Congress began to push back against pro-education funding and assistance programs passed earlier in the Clinton Administration. "The feds are talking about cutting back direct lending. The guaranteed loan program will still be there, you just won't get it directly from the government," said Collins. "But, with a budget cutting mentality, one of the things that goes down first is grants and education."

With a dramatic shift in power in the House, partisan politics is much more vocal about the direct-lending issue, and the "partisan split is being enhanced further by private-lending interests opposed to direct loans, which are trying to capitalize on the change in power in Congress," said the December seventh issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"I'd like to know how many businesses contribute to scholarships. Who are they? How much do they contribute? When an academic endowment is an easy tax write-off for a large corporation, why aren't more of them doing it?" asked Thalman.

More of them are. According to the November 1994 issue of Governing, "the corporate world now donates slightly more to public universities than it does to private ones. Grant proposals to major businesses have increased, corporate donors say, as public colleges seek out alternative funding sources."

Unfortunately for most students, those corporate donations go to specific projects and usually involve the naming of buildings after the donor, not paid tuition. And while the renovation to the Knight Library made the research facilities far more extensive for students, it certainly did not decrease tuition. But, "as public funds become tighter, everyone is fighting for private dollars," said Collins. "It's become very competitive."

Private corporations do not ultimately care about the quality of education at a local school; they do care about having corporate logos and CEO names on plaques and monuments. Ironically, high technology and other areas of industry have long complained about the lack of cheap, skilled workers in Oregon. A simple scholarship fund costing less than half what it would cost to build a new library could fund the education of a half-dozen students for four years. While that may not sound like much, compare it to the almost 100 scholarships available now, most of them not renewable and for less than $3000.

A corporate endowment for education would help support a growing high-technology industrial base in Oregon. Students and workers are renewable resources, but companies have to make the conscious effort to invest in local education to get the skilled workers they need.

While corporations threaten relocation when they cannot find cheap skilled labor, students have been relocating for years, constituting a significant brain drain to anywhere but here. Small liberal arts colleges with large endowments are more likely to provide the difference between state or federal assistance and what the student can pay. One of the compromises bureaucrats and counselors tell students about includes the choice of schools. "It may be worth it to go to your not-so-favorite school as an undergraduate because they can provide you with more assistance," said Thalman.

But that type of move is rarely temporary. Most students are likely to find jobs and contacts near their schools, and are likely to settle there as well. Once some students leave Oregon, they are gone for good.

The complexity of the problem may actually be the source of the problem. The very theory that every student deserves a shot at a term or two of college may be the beginning. According to the registrar's office at the University of Oregon, a significant number of students withdraw from school within the first four weeks of Fall Term and many more don't return for Winter Term. In fact, before the fourth week of Fall Term last academic year, over 700 students withdrew from the University.

To alleviate some of these problems, perhaps the entire system should take one of two extremes; either money for merit or first come, first serve. Either give money to those who deserve it, or don't give money at all. If public schools are going to charge rates of tuition that rise faster than private schools and still try to provide financial assistance, students who have proven academic records should not be over-looked for that assistance.

First, however, bureaucrats and industry must recharge the system with a sense of money for merit or no money at all. In that case, scholarships might be more indicative of true scholarship and less of arbitrary elimination rounds. The system would favor students who work hard and get good grades. It would even reward them for their efforts.

Farrah Bostic, a sophomore majoring in journalism, is Managing Editor of the Oregon Commentator