WHEN IT comes to scholarships, all the recent buzz has been about the need-based AccessUVA program. Despite its generous financial aid to the "needy," AccessUVA does not address the onerous burden of undergraduate costs on everyone else -- an understandable result justly allocating scarce resources among those most in need. However, the University concomitantly doles out the available merit-based scholarships in counter-intuitive and economically peculiar ways. University scholarships should be reconfigured in two ways: Jefferson Scholars should not be eligible for further scholarship money and winners of one scholarship should face a more uphill battle when seeking a second.
The Jefferson Scholars program offers scholarships to about 30 students on the basis of "leadership, scholarship, and citizenship," according to the Undergraduate Record. The scholarship is "designed to cover the entire cost of attending the University for four years." The University conceived this excellent program in order to attract the best students from around the nation, providing them an incentive to choose the University over a more prestigious Ivy League school.
However, it is not clear why Jefferson Scholars should be eligible to apply for further "merit-based" scholarships. While these students may be qualified for an Alumni Hall scholarship or a Dean's scholarship, their mere eligibility is bad policy. First of all, the basic economic theory of diminishing marginal returns provides that each additional scholarship given to a Jeff Scholar will have considerably less economic value than if it were given to another student, who might be paying over $100,000 for four years of education. To a Jeff Scholar, each additional scholarship is merely a wall decoration; further, money paid by the additional scholarships becomes spending cash for iPods, Polo shirts and high-quality beer. As important as such consumer items are to some Jeff Scholars, reducing the financial burden on talented non-Jeff Scholars is a better use of our public school resources.
Scholarships handed out by our University shoulddepend both on strong qualifications and the student's status regarding other scholarships. Specifically, winning one merit-based scholarship should make it somewhat more difficult to win another merit-based scholarship, while winning a Jefferson Scholarship should altogether eliminate students from consideration. First, this would guarantee that a broader base of merit is rewarded, rather than the same students. This alternative policy recognizes that the University has more than 30 students worthy of merit-based aid.
Second, it would make our University a more attractive option. A school that offers a plethora of scholarships to only 30 students is less attractive than a school that offers the same number of scholarships to a greater number of students. The University should not be a servant to the oligarchy of "Jefferson" Scholars at the expense of everyone else.
One could argue that when students apply for scholarships, they apply not only for the money, but for the prestige, which will later help them in graduate school admissions. But if the Jeff Scholarship is truly as prestigious as claimed, then such prestige should overshadow the relatively less notable scholarships. Furthermore, students could make explicit that the Jeff Scholarship is so prestigious that it bars them from receiving further University-based scholarships.
This leads to a second point: barring Jeff Scholars from eligibility could only apply to scholarships in which University has full decision-making powers. Scholarships such as the Robert Adams Bradford Scholarship (for $10,000) are given to the University by benefactors who can be asked to stipulate whether or not Jeff Scholars are eligible for their scholarships. Also, Jefferson scholars should direct their attention away from relatively small cookies such as Dean's scholarships and towards bigger fish such as the Truman Scholarship. Third, a system could be designed so that Jeff Scholars can apply for the "honor" of winning a scholarship, but not be eligible to receive the actual money. The money, rather, would go to a second winner, who would receive both the honor and the money. This remarkably simple system would both honor the merited while addressing all of these concerns.
College is ridiculously expensive, pure and simple. This unfortunate reality is only made slightly better by the scarce financial help available through various University and non-University outlets. Given the situation, "absurd" best describes a system in which students with full rides are being paid spending money when hundreds of other similarly qualified candidates are being passed over. This silent injustice, supported by few but spoken against by none, needs to be done away with so that our system better reflects social realities and common sense.
Sina Kian is a Cavalier Daily Opinion columnist. He can be reached at skian@cavalierdaily.com.
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