Scholarship money is a type of financial aid, awarded to students for their academic merit based on a mix of GPA, SAT scores, and class rank (How to get a scholarship 2011). Scholarship is not easy to get or apply nowadays as the requirements are high and based on the merit. The awards are almost always for top students. According to the statistic from The University of Virginia, 318 students applied for scholarships and only 83 are awarded scholarship (Scholarship Statistic 2011). The scholarship mentioned above was a merit based scholarship and had caused such a low percentage of students able to get a scholarship. However, some universities were concerned with the student's actual needs of scholarship. Such university is the University of Texas at Austin where they plan to shift from merit scholarship to needed-based aid by ending the participation in the NMSP (Jaschik 2009). So, scholarship should not be given based on merit. Although some people think that scholarship can be a form of motivation for students to worker harder, the government should consider giving the scholarship to students based on other criteria because proper distribution will ensure fairness, it will elevate parents and students’ financial burden and promotes students’ performance in both curriculum and co-curriculum.
Firstly, not every scholarship holder actually needs the scholarship as compared to those who actually cannot obtain for scholarships. Carey (2009) states that it is sad to see the United States of America wastes a huge amount of money providing college financial aid to students from high-income family. This shows that most financial aid is given to the wealthy students instead of the needy students and it is such a waste of fund and re...
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In one particular article, the main character has $150,000 that she wanted to give as a scholarship to someone who was in need. Although she grew up poor as was not able to go to college, she wanted to make sure that someone who was like her when she was younger had the chance to get an education. All that she had besides the money she was gonna use for the scholarship was just enough to get
Poverty in America is a very complex issue that can be looked at from many directions. There are a plethora of statistics and theories about poverty in America that can be confusing and at times contradicting. It is important to objectively view statistics to gain a better understanding of poverty and to wade through the stereotypes and the haze of cultural views that can misrepresent the situation.The official poverty line in America begins with a person making at or below $12,060. To calculate the poverty line for a family, an additional $4,180 is added to the base of $12,060 for each additional member(“Federal Poverty Level Guidelines”). According to the last U.S. census, over 45 million or 14.5% of Americans are at or below the poverty line(Worstall). At this level, the U.S. poverty level has not changed much from the 1970s when the government began a “War on Poverty.” However,
State and Community Scholarships: You can approach the local community and state owned institutions to g...
The issue of scholarship selection criteria is mainly one of morality. It is not fair for students to be judged only the number of dollars in their pockets when applying for scholarships. Students who obtain scholarships receive them because they are special in some way. Special students should be rewarded in the form of a scholarship. Should talents be taken out of the equation, the students may not try as hard to excel at their talents. There is less motivation for students to achieve because they learn that hard work is not rewarded with scholarships. This is a horrible lesson to teach the students of this country. It is immoral and unfair.
Steve Cohen shows the disparity between the rising cost of college and a family’s capability to afford it. Cohen explains “Tuition has risen almost 1,200 percent in the last 35 years, and the sticker price for many four-year private colleges and out-of-state public universities exceeds $250,000.” Moreover, he goes on to say that even at public universities, it is about $80,000 for four years for tuition and other college related expenses. Later in his article, Cohen explains how this leaves middle-class families in a very uncomfortable situation. The parents or other money-making entities in the household want their student to go to college and earn a degree, but now there can be an element of stress in figuring out how the fees will be paid for. Furth...
Scholarship is academic study or achievement; learning at a high level. For as long as I can remember I have had A’s and B’s in all of my classes. I have been in the proficient class since I was in 6th
Some people do not enjoy or feel like they are mature enough to take on the responsibility of college. College is known to be very difficult and if a student is not responsible enough to work for their grades or feel discouraged when things get difficult, then the scholarship would end-up wasted and the money the scholarship owners spent would also be wasted. Eventually many scholarship companies would probably have to stop funding the scholarship because of the high demand. Also, if a company only has enough funding to pay for a small number of students then how would the government choose who to force to accept the scholarship? And could said students deny the scholarships if they do not want to attend? If so then it seems like it could be a little hypocritical if they do not allow all accepted students to deny the privilege, which creates a paradox of some sort, and if not then the scholarship is wasted. Scholarships also usually cover a portion of the tuition need and some families do not have enough money to cover the rest of the tuition. This would cause a family or the person being forced to attend college to go into debt for something they did not want to do, let alone pay for, and can cause unnecessary problems for many
As The “Progress of Education Reform” suggests, tuition discounting is major contributor to the rising cost of college in the sense that while it provides a tuition discount to the one particular student receiving the grant or scholarship it places a heavier burden on the majority demographic that attends the university without such discounting. (The Progress of Education Reform” 1). In contrast to popular opinion, scholarships and grants which are normally regarded as blessings are ironically a contributing factor to rising tuition prices. Basically, the universities have to make up for the money they lost by awarding the scholarships so the majority of the student population who did not qualify feel it in their pocketbooks. A final cause of this ludicrous tuition spike is the shift in university budgets to cater to the administration departments of the schools. Jobs in this department are non-teaching jobs that provide student services ranging from student safety to counseling and wellness programs. These jobs are definitely
A kid growing up in poverty does not have near the same probability of graduating from a university as a wealthy individual does, and each learns to value post high school education accordingly. Do you think most poor hungry kids are going to think about college after seeing flashy drug dealers from their own neighborhoods driving Benzes, wearing designer clothes, loaded with jewelry, and toting matching Rolex watches? They know this kind of life is morally wrong, but do you think they would rather see their families continue to live like rats? Many of these kids have already dropped out of high school to better support their families by working a full time job. So many times funding is not the only problem. Sure, they could probably get financial aid to go to college and make even more money in four to six years, but hungry stomachs and overdue rent payments just can’t wai...
Wolf, Patrick. "Lost Opportunities: lawmakers threaten D.C scholarships despite evidence of benefits." Unabridged version of article published in education next 9:4 (2009): 1-15.
In our lives today, not everyone can financially afford to attend a four year university or college, but yet people still attend because they have academic goals. Currently there is help with grants, merit scholarships and loans available for some. However many students do not realize they will eventually be left to pay the majority of the money back. Students
In 1990, Schwarz (1990) stated about one in five American families lived beneath the poverty line. According Lein (2013), it is estimated that as of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month. This constitutes almost 20 percent of all non-elderly households with children living in poverty. About 866,000 households appear to live in extreme poverty across a full calendar quarter. The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011(Lein, 2013).
There are two different types of financial aid for college students, merit-based aid and need-based aid. Merit-based aid is given to students with good grades and allows them to not have to pay the full price of college tuition. This allows students who work hard in school to reap some form of reward for their efforts. Need-based aid gives students the ability to continue their education, when they would not have the money for college otherwise. The problem that is faced with the two kinds of aid is which party should receive the money, the hard working students or the lower class students?
Many significant questions regarding higher education are in relation to its cost, raising fears that higher education has become unaffordable. Education fee for universities and colleges has continuously grown to become one of the largest expense for most students and parents over the years, especially with the never-ending dramatic tuition fee increases resulting from public funding cuts for education by the federal and state governments. Selingo (para 3) reported that higher education cost definitely has a direct impact on access, thus, the frequent increases in cost are logically of great concern to many, including parents, students, and education policymakers. In other words, this has disadvantaged the poor families, resulting in unequal education opportunities for Americans and putting attainment of higher education in danger of becoming a hereditary privilege rather than a right for all people (Selingo para 6).
Fees and loans are too big of a load for young people to carry. A lot of students drop out do to the pressure of having to worry about all the loans they have to pay back after they are done with college. This should not be an issue to the student. According Iatham Emmmons, “Even worse, a large portion of students never receive funding at all due to the multitude of stipulations that must be adhered to in order to qualify for assistance. A major flaw in the current federal educational assistance programs is that the students’ parents’ income is used to calculate financial need” (Emmons 3). Even citizens who try to get help by applying for funding never end up getting it because they do not meet the needs required for the funding. Education should be p...