That all is not well in the current state of higher education is an inarguable fact. Some of the most obvious evidence for this is that the cost of tuition skyrocketing while a third of college professors are only part-time and, according to the American Community Survey, “31 percent of part-time faculty are living near or below the federal poverty line.”
Colleges are extracting more money than ever from students and paying less of it than ever to faculty. I could write an entire article on the disproportionate expansion of administrative positions, but in this one I want to draw attention to a phenomenon that seems to be widely accepted but actually has negative effects.
The phenomenon I am referring to is the shift in financial aid from need-based toward merit-based financial. As a staunch Republican, I admit that I find the concept of meritocracy that seems to underlie this trend appealing. America should be a place where people are rewarded for excellence, not mediocrity, right?
But as I researched the phenomenon, I found that merit-based aid actually works against the meritocratic ethic of America by making it more difficult for lower-income students to climb the social ladder.
Lower socioeconomic status is correlated with lower academic performance. So between two people with identical abilities, the one born into a wealthier household is likely to be more successful academically. If aid is merit-based rather than need-based, the benefit would go to the more academically successful of these two persons, who is more likely to be the richer one. Merit-based aid thus makes college cheaper for people who can already afford it while making it less attainable for those who could not afford it without significant aid. It’s helping more middle and upper class than working class students.
Getting a college degree still plays an important part in lifting people out of poverty. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for people with a bachelor’s degree is 2.8 percent, compared to 5.4 percent with only a high school diploma. The median weekly earnings for the same groups are $1,137 and $678, respectively. So by making it more difficult for a poor student than a middle class or wealthy student of the same academic ability to attend college, the current state of affairs in higher education actually discourages upward mobility.
A combination of factors is driving higher education’s shift toward merit-based rather than need-based financial aid.
The first is that universities are buying into a rating arms race, trying to ascend the college rankings to become ever more attractive to elite students who will one day be elite donors, but in the process they have lost their soul, the heart of what higher education is. Contrary to what the administrators driving these trends may think, universities are not corporations devoted to continual growth in size and wealth. Rather, they are places of learning that enrich the lives and improve the circumstances of students. A college’s rank on the list should not be as important as the effort it is making to offer an education to people who want to get one but have financial obstacles.
But it’s not just universities themselves that are driving these harmful trends in higher education. State governments have certainly contributed to the preference for merit-based over need-based scholarships, and in shameless fashion. According to educational scholars Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos, “before 2008, states provided roughly $9,000 per student for higher education. Today, that number has fallen to around $7,000, the lowest level in thirty years,” an article in the New York Review of Books reported last month. But the steep decline in aid isn’t even the worst thing states are doing to education.
In South Carolina, the Palmetto Fellows, Life, and Hope scholarships, all considered merit-based financial aid, are funded by the lottery, which studies have shown is played disproportionately by low-income people. Because being low-income is correlated with lower academic performance and thus less chance of attaining one of the merit-based scholarships the lottery funds, what we’re basically seeing is the poor paying to subsidize the college education of the middle and upper class.
This is outrageous. Not only is our state and its universities allocating the resources that should be used for the common good in a way that benefits the already well-off, but the poor are paying directly for education subsidies that go predominately to richer students. I don’t care whether you think our nation’s institutions should be actively promoting income equality; we should all be able to agree that at the very least they shouldn’t be working against it.
I write this article from the perspective of a doctor’s kid with an educational savings plan my parents have been paying into for years. Nevertheless, 79 percent of my college expenses for next semester are paid for by state and university financial aid. The system definitely benefits people like me, but at the cost of making college less attainable for those who need it most. Academically gifted people already have a lot going for them in life. Making college cheaper for them is not as important as making it cheaper for those coming from low income backgrounds.
Thus, for a truly meritocratic society in which your abilities and effort, not your birth, determine your future, we need to return to primarily need-based, not merit-based financial aid.