Merit Aid and Website Content
Flying back from Orlando this morning reading USA Today... and the story about how colleges are reconsidering the use of merit aid as a recruitment practice. You can read the article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-03-14-merit-aid_N.htm
This made me think about how almost no schools provide decent web content about merit aid practices. In a world of "reality" marketing, this is one subject that is seldom treated with any realism.
USA Scoops Hamilton College Website
The USA Today article mentions that Hamilton College is taking the plunge and elminating merit aid for the new class of 2008. That's pretty major news indeed, not only for higher education in general but for future middle class students considering Hamilton who do not quality for need-based aid according to the stringent federal guidelines. And we know, of course, that many families don't consider loans as a desirable form of financial aid.
A visit to http://www.hamilton.edu/ and a review of the news stories didn't reveal anything about changes forthcoming in the merit aid practice. A search for "merit aid" found the list of current merit scholarships but nothing about any planned changes. The 2008 freshmen are of course juniors right now and many of them are well into the college selection process. Let's check back in a few days and see if the USA Today article prompts new content about this on the Hamilton website.
Muhlenberg College Still Does it Best
Meanwhile, my favorite content on how financial aid awards really work at many colleges is still found at Muhlenberg College. "The Real Deal on Financial Aid" tells future students and their parents that the mix of grants and loans a student receives is driven in no small part by how much the college you've applied to wants you to enroll. That, Muhlenberg, admits is best called "preferential packaging" and is in widespread use. See the content at http://www.muhlenberg.edu/admissions/aid.html
Let's hope that more colleges take the Muhlenberg path and present more realistic content about financial aid, student debt, and much more. If reality marketing (no, that's not an oxymoron) is really growing, that will start to happen soon.