Balance the playing field

New students getting accepted to IU are about to wake up with fewer scholarship dollars being thrown their way.

Upon admission to the University, all students are assessed to receive an automatic scholarship based on their high school academic performance. Next year the benchmarks for receiving this money will be raised.

To receive the money, a student needs a 3.7 high school grade point average and a 27 ACT or 1220 SAT score. The money available will vary between $1,000 and $11,000 per year depending on the level of merit and whether or not a student is an Indiana resident.

The previous standards, which were announced in 2009, included several tiers of scholarships ranging from $2,000 a year to $9,000 a year. The IU Excellence scholarship, awarding a total of $36,000 to students with an ACT score over 30 and a GPA of 3.8 or above, was the highest automatic award possible to Indiana residents, while the IU Distinction scholarship gave the same awards for out-of-state students.

The requirements of a student receiving a scholarship in the future are also relatively steep.

An individual must maintain a GPA of more than 3.0 to continue to renew their scholarship, demonstrating a desire by the University for those individuals to maintain the academic excellence that got them the money in the first place.

These scholarship changes represent an understanding of the type of student arriving at Indiana.

The caliber of student is changing, so, too, must the scholarships. It demonstrates a level of attention and responsibility by the University to change the way its business is conducted based on the products it is receiving.

The bigger issue at hand, however, is what is being done with the money that most likely will not be going to the merit-based receiving group.

If the standard for scholarships goes up, it is reasonable to believe that the number of recipients will also go down, effectively signaling a drop in the total scholarship dollars given to students based upon their high school performance.

That being said, the money that isn’t going to the students who just missed the merit cut-off needs to go somewhere. The University should not just absorb these funds.

That money needs to go toward helping students in need.

College is an economic investment that, in today’s fiscal climate, is stressful. For more and more people, it is perceived as an investment not worth making.

While less money needs to be given for students based upon their academic performance, more needs to be given to those with a financial need.

The money that is being saved by trimming the merit benchmarks can and should go straight into making the college experience less of a financial burden for as many individuals as is possible.

The University, by tweaking the way that scholarship money is being distributed, is doing its due diligence to ensure that the financial assistance being given to University students is maximizing the benefits for those to whom it is given. The obligation continues, though, for the school to ensure that the money doesn’t just disappear.

IU has a responsibility to help more, not fewer, students pay for college.

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