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Scholarships and student debt; incentivizing pro-bono work
ConcernedStudent
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One of the topics raised at a recent Q&A function at my law school was the existence of student debt, and how a recent WSJ article noted that, for the first time in history, the overall amount of student debt has surpassed that of credit card debt, and how this was especially alarming given that student debt is overwhelmingly an issue between 18-30 year old people, and credit card debt is spread roughly evenly over people of all ages. (no cite, just repeating what the speaker had to say).
This led into the issue of what steps the school was taking to mitigate such debt. The speaker noted that, in a recent survey of grads with 600+ replied, a majority of people surveyed who reported trouble meeting their student loan obligations "wished they would have more seriously pursued opportunies to reduce their debt while they were still in school."
Immediately following this, it was noted that the school's mechanism for trying to incentivize such measures would be the redirection of all fundraising dollars into scholarships. No new scholarship funds were mentioned, and the only scholarships I know of for returning students at my school are automatic, non-application scholarhships for 50% tuition, 75% tuition, and 100% tuition for second and third-year students with 3.6 GPA or above, on our curved 30% A / 40%B / 30%C grading scale (F's given to anybody 50% below the highest grade)
The topic immediately following this was the school's complete revamp of the its clinical programs (i.e. pro-bono law office staffed by students); apparantly the programs will still be unpaid, and aside from new offices, no other information was given on the revamp.
My first thought after the program ended was, "well, the kids with 3.6 or higher GPA's don't need the scholarship help; of all the graduating class they're far and away statistically the most likely to have opportunities to take well-paying jobs to offset their debt." Thinking about it more, I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I mentioned this idea to the group of students I was sitting with, and had get so upset she called me an elitist and stormed off. Would such an idea be elitist, or populist. Tyranny of a silent majority?
My questions are: is it wrong to suggest that, considering the above statement, scholarships should be eliminated in part or in whole, and that money should be redistributed to offsetting tuition costs at their inception (i.e. credit hour costs)?
Is it necessary for schools to monetarily incentivize students to do well when students have implicit motiviations to do well in the form of getting a good-paying job post-graduation? Are high GPA students more morally deserving of money than their lower-GPA peers? Are these high-GPA students effectively double-collecting?
How do we incentivize students to take part in clinical labs which effectively jeopardize a student's chance of making that 3.6/3.8/4.0 GPA cutoff?
Is it fair to assume that same implicit job-after-grad motiviation for students participating in the clinical program, when the well-known and established metric for a law firm's initial recruiting efforts is a GPA cutoff, and clinical work / other character-building functions / unpaid experience are only taken into account later?
Does the idea of scholarship money incentives even make sense in the context of a bell-curve grading system where, so long as everyone doesn't fail, some people HAVE to get A's?
I know that government loan-forgiveness and other incentives out there exist, do they solve this problem in whole or partially, or not at all?
Just lots of food for thought...
This led into the issue of what steps the school was taking to mitigate such debt. The speaker noted that, in a recent survey of grads with 600+ replied, a majority of people surveyed who reported trouble meeting their student loan obligations "wished they would have more seriously pursued opportunies to reduce their debt while they were still in school."
Immediately following this, it was noted that the school's mechanism for trying to incentivize such measures would be the redirection of all fundraising dollars into scholarships. No new scholarship funds were mentioned, and the only scholarships I know of for returning students at my school are automatic, non-application scholarhships for 50% tuition, 75% tuition, and 100% tuition for second and third-year students with 3.6 GPA or above, on our curved 30% A / 40%B / 30%C grading scale (F's given to anybody 50% below the highest grade)
The topic immediately following this was the school's complete revamp of the its clinical programs (i.e. pro-bono law office staffed by students); apparantly the programs will still be unpaid, and aside from new offices, no other information was given on the revamp.
My first thought after the program ended was, "well, the kids with 3.6 or higher GPA's don't need the scholarship help; of all the graduating class they're far and away statistically the most likely to have opportunities to take well-paying jobs to offset their debt." Thinking about it more, I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I mentioned this idea to the group of students I was sitting with, and had get so upset she called me an elitist and stormed off. Would such an idea be elitist, or populist. Tyranny of a silent majority?
My questions are: is it wrong to suggest that, considering the above statement, scholarships should be eliminated in part or in whole, and that money should be redistributed to offsetting tuition costs at their inception (i.e. credit hour costs)?
Is it necessary for schools to monetarily incentivize students to do well when students have implicit motiviations to do well in the form of getting a good-paying job post-graduation? Are high GPA students more morally deserving of money than their lower-GPA peers? Are these high-GPA students effectively double-collecting?
How do we incentivize students to take part in clinical labs which effectively jeopardize a student's chance of making that 3.6/3.8/4.0 GPA cutoff?
Is it fair to assume that same implicit job-after-grad motiviation for students participating in the clinical program, when the well-known and established metric for a law firm's initial recruiting efforts is a GPA cutoff, and clinical work / other character-building functions / unpaid experience are only taken into account later?
Does the idea of scholarship money incentives even make sense in the context of a bell-curve grading system where, so long as everyone doesn't fail, some people HAVE to get A's?
I know that government loan-forgiveness and other incentives out there exist, do they solve this problem in whole or partially, or not at all?
Just lots of food for thought...
ConcernedStudent on
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I guess you could argue for more means testing in performance-based scholarships - that is, make both need and performance considerations in scholarships, rather than simply performance - but simply eliminating scholarships for people who have the gall to do well seems a bit... off.
That said, I would say those getting good grades do have a greater moral claim to scholarships than those just getting by. As a class, those with better grades are working harder than those with mediocre grades, which makes the practice pretty darned meritocratic.