Today’s rankings-centric colleges and universities have fallen in love with “merit aid.” By reducing tuition sticker prices for top applicants, institutions can entice those who otherwise would have attended a more prestigious university and keep faculty, who tend to prefer teaching brighter, more engaged students, happy.
College leaders like this tool mainly because it helps their institutions climb the U.S. News & World Report rankings. And in public higher education, it allows policymakers to claim that they’re keeping talent local and boosting regional economies. George Leef, however, is skeptical. In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, he analyzes merit aid and concludes that it produces no tangible public benefits.
Leef argues that universities should stop trying to woo elite students with reduced tuition. Instead, they should focus on creating high-value degree programs and let real academic excellence speak for itself. And he says that many jobs that graduates land are part of an interstate and international labor market, so the claim that merit aid keeps human capital in-state is dubious.
“State universities should take the lead in getting out of the rankings/prestige game and not up the ante,” writes Leef. “Private colleges are free to adopt any financial aid and tuition reduction policies they want, but state institutions ought to have uniform pricing, whether for college tuition, motor vehicle licenses, or anything else.”