College aid tilts more to merit than to need

In college, Kaylea Happell has learned the intricate theories and practical applications of political science and international relations. And she has done it on someone else's dime.

The senior will graduate debt-free from the State University College at Brockport this spring, largely because of its Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence program. It covers tuition, room costs, mandatory fees and most meals for high school valedictorians and salutatorians with a 96 average or better and SAT scores of at least 1250.

"If you're first or second in your class, this is a pretty good deal," said the senior from Chautauqua County. "You don't have to pay for your education."

Scholarships and aid directly from colleges once were reserved for the neediest students. But increasingly over the past 20 years, schools have covered some or most of the costs for their best and brightest.

Brockport spends more than $2.5 million a year on its top merit scholarships, all of which cover huge chunks of the cost of attendance. Rochester Institute of Technology's Presidential Scholarship provides up to $10,000 a year, based on students' high school academic records and recommendations. And all freshmen admitted to St. John Fisher College are considered for Fisher merit scholarships, most of which are $8,000 to $10,000 a year.

Countless organizations and groups also offer college scholarships tied to good test scores or grades. And more than a dozen states have broad merit programs, usually offering some tuition and fee money for students with at least a B average, although New York does not.

But the growth of college "merit aid" is causing some controversy.

Hamilton College in Oneida County got national attention last month when it announced that it would end merit aid, focusing its institutional financial aid on the neediest students. Meanwhile, the University of Rochester has been scaling back how much it spends on merit aid as it boosts need-based aid.

"Merit alone isn't a problem," said Don Emmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. "If you're using merit money at the expense of not enough need-based money, that's where it appears to be problematic."

Growth of aid

According to a U.S. Education Department analysis of 2003-04 financial aid, more students from the richest quarter of New York families got merit grants, usually in the form of scholarships, than did families in the poorest quartile. The well-off students also got bigger merit aid packages — $5,400 on average, compared to $3,800 for the bottom quartile, the department found. Meanwhile, as need-based aid rose 41 percent nationally during the 1990s, merit aid spiked more than 200 percent, according to the National Association of State Financial Aid Administrators.

Individual colleges generally don't divulge how much they spend on merit and need-based aid because it is closely held competitive information, said Donald E. Heller, senior research associate with Pennsylvania State University's Center for the Study of Higher Education.

For the students who get scholarships for their smarts, merit aid is both a reward for effort in high school and a way to benefit the college overall.

Having more top students "pushes people to want to strive for better things, higher grades," said Ines Nam, a SUNY Brockport senior from Argentina and a Distinguished Scholars aid recipient. "Overall, it raises the level of the school."

For colleges, merit aid is also a means to attract students, most of whom apply to multiple colleges and sometimes negotiate the best financial aid packages from competing schools.

At Nazareth College, where 23 percent of the school's financial aid goes to "no need" or merit students, "the money is not necessarily being taken away from somebody else," said Tom DaRin, vice president for enrollment management.

"If we went solely need-based, do we have the resources to meet the full need of our applicants? The answer is no," he said. "We are trying to take the dollars we have and spread them out among as many students as we can impact."

Rolling back

At Hamilton, the cut in merit aid means more money going toward need-based aid, said Monica Inzer, dean of admission and financial aid. However, it won't be a huge change; the college estimates that about 5 percent of its $21 million financial aid budget was spent on merit aid.

"Everybody who gets into Hamilton is a high-level student, has a high-level GPA," Inzer said. "There's been this reaction from bloggers and different people to say this means you're going to take money from hardworking great students and give it to other people who don't work hard and are poor. They're all great students."

Whether other schools follow Hamilton's lead, "it's really early to say," said John R. Smith, associate director of financial aid at Roberts Wesleyan College.

Four years ago, UR was spending more than a third of its $9 million aid budget on merit aid, said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jonathan Burdick. Today, the university is spending roughly $2 million of a $19 million aid budget, with the rest going for need-based aid. "We're pretty aggressive that some low-income students are going to have access to this place," Burdick said.

UR has stopped providing an automatic $5,000 to every New York resident who attends. It also has ended a commitment to give a scholarship to every high-performing student, and about 80 percent of UR's incoming students qualify now.

"It made no sense to be locking in a scholarship program for virtually the entire pool of applicants," Burdick said. "We still give scholarships to a lot of the best students."

Brockport started its array of merit scholarships about a decade ago, and they probably played a role in making admission to the college increasingly competitive, said J. Scott Atkinson, director of financial aid.

The fall 2003 freshman class, which included Happell and another current senior, Erin Doring, helped move Brockport into Tier 2 of SUNY's ranking of selectivity, up from Tier 3.

Doring, 22, of Colonie, Albany County, was already a fan of SUNY Brockport, seeing it as not too big and not too small with a good psychology program. But the Presidential Scholarship she was offered meant other schools fell by the wayside.

As one of four sisters in college, "I wanted to help in whatever way I could" with the costs, said Doring. "In my mind, I felt like I needed (the scholarship). In reality, maybe not."

Happell was more interested in UR but would have faced $22,000 in loans yearly: "I went, 'Huh, free school.' The idea of not having any (debt) after four years ... was pretty good."