Merits of student aid

There was a time when the term "need-based student aid" was redundant. Student aid was, by definition, need-based. It was aimed at kids who were strong college material but couldn't pay the freight. This money enriched American higher education and burnished our democracy.

Then a funny thing happened a couple of decades or so ago. "Merit-based student aid" began to take off.

Both public and private colleges, largely those in lower tiers, began offering simoleons to the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers who didn't need the dough but whom the institutions desperately wanted to improve their student profiles.

Since then, the growth in merit-based aid at these places has outpaced that of need-based aid in an effort to attract these upper-middle-class students with higher board scores who will make a school more competitive. While some merit money is mixed with need, the trend is clear and results scandalous.

College rankings exacerbate this noxious development. Blame rankings on those odious annual lists U.S. News & World Report dreamed up to sell magazines. Otherwise sane academic leaders drank the Kool-Aid to look better.

Listen to Tufts president Lawrence Bacow, who offers zero merit dollars: "It is far from clear to me how society is better off when scarce financial aid resources are diverted from the neediest students to those who are not needy by any measure, simply to redistribute high scoring students among our institutions."

Bingo.

"He's right. Colleges are giving larger amounts of institutional aid [as opposed to state or federal dollars] to more affluent kids," said Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst at the College Board, who has done extensive research on the subject.

"I'm very upset by this trend to merit aid," she adds. "If you say to low-income kids, 'Sorry, we're going to help rich kids against giving you all you need,' that's problematic."

Baum, among many, cites Washington University in St. Louis for its extensive use of merit aid: "It didn't have to do it. That's a choice. That's about rankings." (Washington U. would not give me numbers on its student aid, which, in my book, is akin to refusing a breathalyzer. Closer to home, Simmons did the same and Emerson never got back to me.)

The top-tier outfits are often need-blind -- they provide whatever is necessary to a needy applicant they want. Locally, Harvard and MIT are. So is Boston College. Boston University is not. This year, it gave $30 million in merit aid and $148 million in need-based aid.

One merit aid addict is in recovery. Like Washington U., the University of Rochester is known for its heavy use of merit dollars. But it has shrunk them dramatically in the last three years after the arrival of Jon Burdick as head of admissions and financial aid.

Burdick reduced merit awards from 40 percent of institutional student aid to 17 percent today, with another 4 percent drop to come next year. "When I arrived, 36 percent of students had merit awards," he said. "We've cut that in half."

Many outfits are rethinking their merit aid strategies as public scrutiny increases. Maybe the scales fell from their eyes and they saw the unfairness of it all, but I doubt it. The Observer believes they're changing because they look bad.

Whatever the reason, Baum says the merit dollars have leveled off in the past few years. Witness Rochester. And George Washington University announced last week that it will cut its merit aid by $2.5 million next year. It still spent $31 million on merit aid against $86 million in need-based aid this year. (That's the least it can do, given G. W.'s nosebleed sticker price next fall will top $50,000.)

Public four-year universities are big on merit aid. The University of Rhode Island, for example, gave $10.5 million in need-based and $9 million in merit-based aid the last academic year. And, says Burdick, big outfits like Texas and Georgia have robust programs to enroll smart in-state students. (Merit-based aid at UMass-Amherst this year was almost a quarter of its total student aid.)

Need-based aid dropped more than 10 percent at Bridgewater State College in the last four years while, surprise, merit-based aid rose about the same amount. To improve the student profile?

"Correct," says Heather Smith, who oversees admissions and financial aid.

The dirty truth is that the merit-based aid strategy often works -- Washington U. is now a hot school -- which is why kicking the habit is so hard. The cry at merit-addicted schools is: How else do we raise scores?

As long as scores trump everything else, there is no answer. Meanwhile, says Bacow, "These students are going to attend colleges, very good colleges, regardless of whether merit aid is provided."

Burdick suggests that U.S. News should at least include income figures in its rating process. Grand idea. But the larger point here is that American higher education needs to police itself.

All of the merit aid addicts should enter a 12-step program to get morally clean and sober.

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.