More Evidence of the Merit-Aid Arms Race

In our online discussion of Caitlin Zaloom's chapter on "Enmeshed Autonomy" from Indebted, several students commented on the disturbing evidence that merit-based aid at public institutions is rising faster than need-based aid.  This is just one of many ways that the increased competition between public institutions, spurred on by privatization, advantages students from more affluent families. As Zaloom writes:

Through "enrollment management" ... colleges and universities sort students to achieve an optimal balance of higher-paying students and lower-paying ones.  Ideally, this process would free up aid funds for lower-income families after higher-paying students were enrolled.  In fact, the opposite has happened.  The expansion of merit aid has led colleges and universities to give preference in admission to students from middle-class and upper-class families whose grades and test scores reflect their class advantages and has directed scholarship funds toward attracting them.  Instead of increasing resources for low-income students, merit aid curtails them. (Zaloom 101).

She goes on to mention a study at one flagship state university that showed that "so much ... money was going to students from well-off families that the lowest-income students actually paid more on average than other students higher up the economic ladder" (Zaloom 101).  That study, titled "Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind" (PDF available through ERIC), was conducted by Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation.  Burd has a new study titled "Crisis Point: How Enrollment Management and the Merit-Aid Arms Race Are Derailing Public Higher Education" (PDF via The Chronicle) which seems to offer an even more complete survey and analysis of this disturbing trend for anyone interested in exploring this issue as part of their final papers.  

Additional commentary here:

• Inside Higher Education
• The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Birth of American Football

1911 Carlisle team under Pop Warner

This Super Bowl weekend, I found myself listening to an interesting program on National Public Radio's Radiolab about the birth of American Football (January 29, 2020).  Though Rutgers certainly claims credit for the "First Intercollegiate Football Game," we know that the game that Rutgers won over Princeton looked a lot more like rugby than the American Football that we know today.  The program focuses on the evolution of the game, which began at the collegiate level in the late 19th and early 20th century, when it was dominated by the Ivy Leagues (especially Yale and Harvard), and still very much like rugby, but popular because it was thought to help create fully rounded and "manly" men.  The rules changed, though, after the rise of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where Richard Henry Pratt and, later, Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner helped to change the rules so that the faster but lighter Native American players would be better able to compete with the bigger Ivy players.  I had some exposure to the importance of Carlisle from the PBS documentary, Jim Thorpe, The World's Greatest Athlete, which also touches on the way that Carlisle used football for fundraising and recruitment purposes (in ways familiar to us today).  But I really learned a lot from this program, which also talks about the rising awareness of concussions in the sport.
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First Generation Students Documentary

Returning to teaching "Research in the Disciplines: College!" after a long hiatus, I am out scouting for the latest documentary films.  "A Walk in My Shoes: First Generation College Students" interested me because my focus this semester is on the ways that increased privatization has made family support an increasingly important factor in student success.  The issues that first-generation students confront would make a good final topic, as several students who have taken my class over the years have shown.