toasty

[thesightless]

this is fucking great.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/03/college.grants.ap/index.html

i love this idea. if you need the help and want to earn it, we will help you. much better than the idea of handouts for undeserving and unwilling ppl. its like allowing someone to be put on welfare as long as they have worked a real job and show they are gonna get another.

[toasty]

Re: toasty

Good idea in principle. Two thoughts, though:

1. This puts the feds in a little too much of a hands-on position for my liking.
2. The reality is that not all school systems are created equal. I spent most of my pre-college years in suburban areas with great schools. My last two years, however, I spent in the Kansas City school district, and it was a joke. People who go through that school district, or other similar school districts around the country, and go on to succeed do so in spite of their schooling, not because of it. For people in such situations, college could well be the first time they are in an environment that is truly dedicated to education. It would be a shame, I think, to make less money available for the education of people who really need to be educated.

Besides, when you're taking AP courses and things like that, you're probably in line for merit-based scholarships anyway. This program effectively turns the Pell grant program -- which is supposed to be based purely upon need -- into something that is more merit-based.

Many people lack any meaningful choice as to where they go to high school, but everyone gets to pick where they'd like to go to college. If we're going to place limitations upon receipt of financial assistance to ensure that people don't squander that money, it ought to be focused upon what they're doing once they get to college, IMO.

My $.02.

[thesightless]

Re: toasty

yes, but for the people who actually want to get out of the bad situation and not eat up hip hop society of being a bum its great

[toasty]

Re: toasty

yes, but for the people who actually want to get out of the bad situation and not eat up hip hop society of being a bum its great

not following you. it isn't so much that inner city schools are a "bad situation" that you have to "get out of" in the same way as living in gang land, having an abusive family situation, etc. It's just that the inner city schools -- at least the ones I'm familiar with -- are vastly inferior, and anyone that thinks that someone who comes up through an inner city school system has the same opportunity as someone who has been educated in a suburban setting where the school district benefits from a more affluent tax base, you're kidding yourself. At my high school, even though we didn't have a golf team, we used to joke that golf had been cancelled until the team ball was found. The school just lacked the resources to do things you take for granted in other schools.

There is merit-based financial aid, and there is need-based financial aid. In terms of what needs to be done to qualify, they ought to stay that way. With that said, conditioning the continued receipt of that aid upon maintaining a certain number of credit hours or some other criteria seems reasonable to me. For example, if you want to continue to receive your aid, you've got to show up to class regularly and get your shit done. Start skipping class, and you've got to figure out a way to finance your own education. Seems fair, IMO.

I actually conducted scholarship interviews for Mizzou a couple of weeks back. One of the questions we asked ourselves in deciding who should get the scholarships was, "does this person understand the value of this money, and will it be put to good use?" It wasn't a stated element of the criteria for receiving the scholarship, but if we thought someone would take the scholarship money for granted and didn't really appreciate the significance of receiving it, it would knock them down the list a ways...

[thesightless]

Re: toasty

this is need based (based off the Pell) but it is for those who want to actually give 100% to advance thier lives. wonderful IMHO. either way its good.

[AntonyM]

Re: toasty

Always rewarding people for hard work and dedication is a good thing
The issue I think toasty has, is the determination for criteria.
The fact that depending on resources alloted to a school
or the cirriculum designers of a district may or not develop a cirriculum
that offers the opportunity to take courses that can be considered, quailified.
Traditionally, IMO the schools with more finanical resources
are gonna offer the Calculus, Physics, and higher AP with more
frequency than other schools that don't have the resources
or Admin/Faculty who are just trying to get the basic learning tools
instructed. Still it is easy to bais and say
All the rich kid schools are gonna offer the higher math and sciences
and the poor area schools are not, hopefully its not entirely true
but at the surface it feels that way.