(Point 1) I do realize that life is not fair. And I don't necessarily
expect someone else to pay for my son's education. However, scholarships do
exist at most colleges, and I see no reason adopt the attitude: "it's up to
me to pay for my education, so I'm not going to try to get a scholarship."
(Point 2) It might be "fair" to award scholarships by lottery. But higher
education has adopted a different interpretation of "fair." Indeed, there
are several types of "fair." One type of fair aid is "need based," and this
depends very little on grades and very much on family resources. Another
type of aid is "athletics based," and I personally think this is a travesty,
but it exists. Robert Carlson mentioned another type of aid which is armed
forces based. You not only earn a salary in the military, you also earn the
"right" to a certain amount of educational aid should you decide to attend
college after leaving the service. That seems like having someone else to
pay for your education, doesn't it, Bob? All of these sound like that...
why should someone else pay for my education simply because I can play
football, or because I am poor, or because I served in the military?
However, these exist, so it seems to me the people who qualify might as well
take advantage of them.
(Point 3) And finally, the financial aid most appropriate for our discussion
on grades would be scholarships based upon academic ability. When colleges
award academic scholarships I think they genuinely want to award them to the
most deserving students. This means colleges need a reasonably fair way of
determining academic ability. At one time the criterion was primarily HS
grades, but that eroded partly because of grade inflation and partly because
of too many differences from one HS to another. For the past 15-20 years
the class rank has been a fairly good indicator. But now grade inflation
has gotten so bad that even class rank doesn't work any more. Specifically,
grades are so out of control in many high schools that these schools can't
tell you which students are the top 10% because the top 25% all have
identical grades.
This has occurred in a short enough period of time that colleges haven't
quit using class rank yet. We still use it at Bluffton College even though
we know it is not valid. This stuff all has to go through committee,
administrative staff, etc., and it takes a while to get it changed.
This is the aspect that makes me feel my son got "cheated." I can see the
word cheated might not be best word. What happened was he graduated at a
bad time. Grade inflation at his school made the HS GPA and class rank
pretty much worthless in terms of measuring academic ability. But colleges
have not reacted fast enough to change their scholarship policies. Hence my
son got caught in a situation in which a traditional measure of academic
ability eroded faster than the colleges adapted. Bluffton College is
considering completely dropping the HS GPA and class rank from scholarship
determination, and I know other colleges are considering the same thing.
But they haven't done it yet.
So what happened is my son met two of three scholarship requirements at many
colleges. He had a good GPA (a poor indicator). He had a good ACT score (a
good indicator). But he was not in the top 10% (or 20% or 25%) of his class
*as determined by GPA* (now a poor indicator, but used to be better). And I
believe the reason he did not meet the class rank requirement is because
grades are so out of control at his school, and students take so many
different programs in school, that class rank simply cannot be determined by
grades. We either need to stop using grades and class rank, or we need to
put the meaning back into them.
I believe in four years when my daughter graduates from high school her HS
GPA and class rank will not have much bearing on whether she is awarded any
scholarships, because colleges already know grade inflation has reduced
these indicators to nearly worthless. Unfortunately my son graduated at a
time when the HS GPA and class rank are pretty worthless, but still used to
determine scholarships, and because of that he has fewer options than my
daughter is likely to have, and fewer options than I had at a time when HS
grades were more reliable.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817
Robert Carlson said:
Michael,
I do respect your posts, but this one I must contest. It sounds like you do
not realize that life is not fair and that someone else, not you or your
son,
is responsible for funding his education. If he was not able to obtain a
scholarship, and you cannot afford to pay his higher education costs, then I
suggest your son do what I did and join the military before pursuing
college,
or go to a lower cost college. Of course there is also the option of a
federally mandated law that all teachers, tests, and grading must be the
same
for all high schools and colleges. Wouldn't that be something to consider?
No more creativity of any kind.