Word: merite
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...weapons in this war are called "merit-based aid" and "preferential packages." The latest skirmish began in February, when Princeton University, whose $8.4 billion endowment is the largest per student of any U.S. college, announced that it would no longer require its scholarship recipients to take out loans as part of aid packages, replacing them with outright grants. This change will save individual students tens of thousands of dollars and make Princeton more attractive than some equally prestigious campuses--unless they match the offer. Some are doing just that...
...Most colleges play the merit-scholarship game with stealth. Many dodge the discount label by proffering merit scholarships that are endowed by private donors and have set qualifications: Emory offers the Scholars Program; Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., has its Honorary Scholars program. The private University of Rochester offers any New York State resident a $5,000 tuition break--one that just happens to make Rochester financially competitive with the better of the campuses of the State University of New York, to which it often loses applicants...
...stance on the degree to which it's willing to have those conversations" about financial aid, says Amy Grieger, college counselor at Northfield Mount Hermon, a prestigious Massachusetts prep school. What troubles Grieger as well as many college admissions officers is that the latest wave of merit-based scholarships is undermining efforts to promote economic and racial diversity, because it handicaps the lower-income kids, who might not be first in their class. "As a system, we're not serving those students very well," she admits...
...America's higher-education system, considered the most diversified on earth, is valued precisely because of its full menu of choices--from small Bible colleges to world-class universities. If the tuition wars spread further, that diversity will suffer. "In the short term," observes Dickinson's Massa, the merit-scholarship bidding "benefits colleges because we get our numbers. But if as a result we're not able to build new buildings or pay professors, it will cost us our future...
While the extra federal funds will provide a $600 addition to the non-merit-based Pell Grants, increasing the maximum amount of federal aid to $4,350, the federal government's commitment to reducing the cost of higher education will hardly be felt by students receiving Harvard financial aid packages...