University of Texas at Austin won’t fund National Merit scholarships. Instead UT will put all its money into needs-based aid.
UT enrolled 281 National Merit Scholars as freshmen last year, compared with 285 at Harvard. The university will honor those scholarships.
University of California pulled out of National Merit in 2005 because students must earn high PSAT scores to qualify.
I qualified for National Merit, which then had its own test, but didn’t get scholarship money because I couldn’t claim financial need. In later years, reputation-hungry colleges began funding all the Merit Scholars they could attract.
About Joanne
Why didn’t UT tap its alumni donor base to keep the National Merit Scholarships funded? I agree that the taxpayer-funded scholarships ought to be need-based, but private donations could be used to maintain the prestige of attracting lots of National Merit Scholars.
No way this is about the money, but rather about making a statement that they reject elitism. Or something.
The base amount for NM scholarships (the part that is not need based) is usually quite small, much like the “AAA discount” that any hotel will give you without even showing a card.
Hunter said, “No way this is about the money, but rather about making a statement that they reject elitism. Or something.”
Hunter, that is exactly correct. It is another nail in the coffin of the concept of merit in society generally and in education specifically. Twenty years ago, my university colleagues in the Humanities Dept. told me that merit is an antiquated concept. How right they turned out to be…..