|
« AAUP Homepage
|
Merit Scholarships Help Those Least in Need, Study Says
State-run, merit-based scholarship programs adversely affect minority representation on college campuses, according to a report released in August by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project. Who Should We Help? includes studies of such programs in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and New Mexico. The writers conclude that far from fostering access, "these merit scholarships are likely to exacerbate existing gaps in college participation, causing poor and minority students to fall further behind their peers."
Until fairly recently, merit as a criterion for scholarships was confined to small numbers of awards made by individual schools seeking to attract students of extraordinary promise. But the 1990s saw the advent of public programs targeting a larger group. For example, Georgia's Helping Outstanding Students Educationally (HOPE) program waives initial tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for all seniors who graduate from Georgia high schools with a grade point average of at least 3.0, and state support continues for recipients who maintain that average once in college.
Substantial grants are offered on similar terms to students in private institutions. Funded by a state lottery, this large educational outlay—amounting to $300 million in 2000-01—has been much acclaimed. But a statistical analysis of its impact included in the report indicates that while it has increased college attendance by white students in Georgia, HOPE has had "no effect or even a small negative effect on blacks."
The authors of Who Should We Help? acknowledge that more research into the effects of merit-based scholarships is needed, and that not all initiatives have so little influence on minority college participation as the HOPE program does. One chapter points out, for example, that a lottery-based program in New Mexico has helped low-income, high-ability Native American students enroll and succeed at the University of New Mexico. This finding does not hold for African American or Hispanic students at UNM, however. The chapter reinforces a point often stressed by the report's contributors: the state distribution of merit scholarships reflects the correlation of income with academic performance, whether the latter is measured in high school grades as in Georgia, first-semester grades as in New Mexico, or standardized tests as in Michigan. Although popular politically, the allotment of aid in this fashion—in a time of rising tuition and shrinking budgets—strikes members of the Civil Rights Project as a formula for putting large sums of money where they will do the least good.
|