Quick Takes

Comments on Quick Takes

• Curious about the demographics of squash scholarship
• Posted by George Gollin , Professor of Physics at University of Illinois on November 18, 2009 at 9:15am EST

• I have the impression that squash at the high school level is a sport that tends to be played by the affluent. I don't have any data to confirm this, but if this is actually the case, these non-academic-merit scholarships might tend towards families on the high side of the income curve. Those are also the best targets for solicitations from the school's development office.

• Posted by Jason , Sweatshop Hypocrisy on November 18, 2009 at 12:30pm EST

• It's hard to fault any institution that would help end sweatshop labor in the third world and ensure that all workers are treated with minimum standards of respect and dignity. But what about the over two thirds of faculty in higher education who work under the most abysmal and exploitatitve conditions, many of which rival those in sweatshops? The only difference is that adjunct faculty wear more business-like clothes (most of the time) and work on many of the same machines as the full-time, tenured faculty. They are US citizens, but cannot afford health insurance (heck, even rent and food are iffy), and they never attain more job security than the day laborer begging in front of Home Depot. Many state education codes legally sanction abuse of these "professionals" (in quotes because true professionals get paid), and it is up to individual unions at individual college districts to negotiate the tiniest improvement in adjunct conditons--and often such improvements must get the full approval and support of the full-time faculty, many of whom see adjuncts only as a useful bump cushion during budgetary crises. If only colleges who help stamp out sweatshop labor in other countries would look inward first and help fix sweatshop conditons within the majority of their own instructors.

• Technology & Accessibility
• Posted by JP on November 18, 2009 at 1:30pm EST

• I'm curious about this trend of rejecting the Kindle for its visual-dependent implementation of text-to-speech. (It is, then, not unlike most dedicated digital audio players today, which use either touchscreen interfaces or hardware buttons with variable functions, making them difficult to operate for those with vision loss.) Presumably Syracuse, Wisconsin, and Illinois already have procedures in place to accommodate visually impaired students. Why would adopting the Kindle or any other ebook reader as a text distribution tool/model affect these procedures?

• I think so ...
• Posted by Probably So , Fin Aid at Small selective private on November 18, 2009 at 1:45pm EST

• I have no data specific to squash to support or refute Dr. Gollin's notes above. However, in all likelihood, he's correct. Yes, there are counter-examples to the following generalizations. However, overall, merit scholarships overwhelmingly do exactly what Dr. Gollin is suggesting - indeed, it is what this form of "aid" is all about. Using money, in the form of lower tuition, to attract to a campus students with particular characteristics the college or university most desires. But doing so not based on financial need, but on the basis of those desired characteristics. In this case, the ability to play squash. All but certainly NOT an outcome in GWU's mission statement. The alternative to merit-based aid, need-based aid, was originally (long ago now) envisioned as a central method to making higher education available to students from US families across the entire economic spectrum, rather than simply replicating the status quo: the educated make much better incomes, make significant contributions to capital, to science, to knowledge, to production, to innovation, and to all kinds of highly desirable and needed national and intellectual goals. Fine and good. However, if they are the only people whose kids can afford (now $200,000) top-price education, then far too many children of lower incomes never reach college and can never make their contributions, move up, etc. Need-based aid has the purpose of breaking this cycle, which is extremely deleterious to a democracy, to strong national economies, etc. However, merit aid has no such objectives. It is awarded simply to attract to the campus someone that the college particularly desires by lowering the price to that person/family on the basis of something other than financial need. Such as squash-playing. Because merit aid by definition is awarded over, above, and beyond financial need, since a school's need-based aid is supposed to be taking care of that issue (at least that was the original idea), merit-based aid is *necessarily* "aid" that is given in excess of financial need. Thus, yes, Dr. Gollin is correct. The profile of students receiving merit-based aid is more wealthy, more white, more academically talented, and all the like. In general, overall, this is the case. And yes, again, there are counter-examples. But overall, this is the case, necessarily, by the definition of what merit-based aid is. In some senses this would be no problem, so long as any school awarding even $0.10 in merit-based aid fully met the determined financial need of all its admitted students. So, if this were the case, then if the institution really has the financial resources also to award some merit-based aid to attract additional students with highly desired characteristics, there would be little if any conflict here. However, this is hardly the case at all. Perhaps it is the case at GWU, I don't know. But generally speaking, schools must allocate resources to merit-based aid at the expense of need-based aid, in what are now terrible bidding wars, not particularly dissimilar to a nuclear arms race. The other schools with whom one completes for students are all doing it, ever more so, with newer and bigger programs, in order to compete with their competitors, so that most merit-aid schools feel that they have no choice but to use extensive resources for merit-based aid. In nearly all cases, this is financially possible only at the expenses of need-based aid, and BTW, at the expense of other purposes to which the merit money might be dedicated, such as the educational program. But, it's become simply survival. Well, with a big element of thriving thrown in on top. And now, American families have long come to expect this merit-aid. They plan their children's lives around sports, academics, salutory effects of grade inflation at the secondary level, and so on, so that "you'll be able to win a big scholarship to go to college." And they plan their financial lives around this idea too, so that by the time college comes, it is that big scholarship, somewhere, that is the driving force behind final school choice, even in families who, by the methodologies of financial need and financial aid, have resources sufficient to afford at least more of their children's education than they are asked to contribute by the merit-awarding school. Meanwhile though, and this is the problem, that same school is not coming close to fully-funding need-based aid. If they did, they coudln't compete successfully, against all the other schools who are using merit-based aid to compete, and so on. The end result is that, necessarily, by the fundamental objective, and the very definition, of merit-based aid, overall those who receive it are " ... families on the high side of the income curve." It's not that it is given to squash players (in the GWU case) so much as it is the fundamentals of this type of "aid" in general. It's not financial aid. Financial aid is need-based aid. This is incentive aid. In this case, for the ability to play squash.

• What on Earth is the GAO looking at?
• Posted by David Sheridan on November 18, 2009 at 1:45pm EST

• If the GAO has conducted a study and is unable to conclude that student loan lenders have been redlining, I don't know, maybe the definition of redlining has changed. Major lenders (Citibank among them, formerly my school's top lender) instituted blanket policies in which applications from students at entire classifications of college were no longer accepted nor approved. In almost all other kinds of lending, something like this would be illegal. No schools nor students were grandfathered, and those of us on effected campuses only learned about it by reading the higher ed dailies, the lenders themselves couldn't even be bothered to tell us directly.

  And some people still somehow hold onto the belief that student loans should come from private lenders instead of the Federal government. This is just more evidence of why the time has come to move student borrowing to Direct Lending, and it's time the Senate started moving forward with the bill already passed by the House.

• Posted by ADjunct George on November 19, 2009 at 5:45am EST

• The recession has been caused by giving loans to people who could not afford them. The government called the lack of loans to people that could not afford them "redlining." If the government would insure the loans to poor risks going to college, great. Make the loans. If not, let's not have the banks get into problems again. The banks are not able to charge higher loan rates for those that they consider to be higher risks. My granddaughter is getting a loan when she should be working to pay her way without a loan. Here we go again. A policy based upon "feelings" instead of logic. Acadamia is good at that. People need to be able to repay the loans. The banks must be able to make a profit. Having to deny loans to classes of colleges is just a reflection of not being able to decide who should get a loan without running into the government regulations. Academia has brought it on itself.

• but..
• Posted by David Sheridan on November 19, 2009 at 8:45am EST

• Adjunct George - this redlining has not, despite how it's presented in this brief article, only taken place at community colleges. I've spoken to colleagues at expensive, selective private colleges who suddenly learned that Citibank and other lenders ceased lending to their students only because they historically didn't make enough profit at those schools. And students at many community college are no more a debt risk than those at more expensive 4-year schools, in fact many are less so because they need not take on so much debt.

  Mine is not a philosophical argument about the cost of college or whether or not young students should borrow. I am simply saying that private lenders profiting from a taxpayer funded program should not have the legal authority to become arbitrary gatekeepers and prevent eligible students attending participating colleges from taking full advantage of a government benefit.