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August 28, 2003
Is there any HOPE?
My old rival, state Rep. Fran Millar (R - Dunwoody) proposes an interesting fix to the coming crisis at the HOPE scholarship: Make awards contingent on high SAT scores instead of on the basis of inflated grades.
Talk about a real upper-middle class entitlement. If you've really got a problem with grade inflation letting thousands of low achieving students who don't score very well on their SAT's attend college for free, how about telling the state's 'prestigous' institutions not to let them in?
The real fix for HOPE is pretty simple: Start by eliminating fee and book compensation for students who come from wealthy families. If that's not enough, stop paying for fees altogether. HOPE should pay for a college education, but it shouldn't subsidize things like activity fees, which are a fancy way of saying 'athletic club membership'.
If there's still a fiscal crisis, stop paying college tuition for children from wealthy families. Of course, it would be terrible if even one incoming UGA freshman from Dunwoody got a Toyota instead of a Lexus because the state is no longer paying his tuition. But the state has got to compromise somewhere, and tuition for rich kids makes much less sense than Pre-K for poor ones.
Posted by Chris at August 28, 2003 08:49 PM
Comments
WORD. I couldn't agree more.
Posted by: Wes at August 28, 2003 11:44 PM
"but it shouldn't subsidize things like activity fees, which are a fancy way of saying 'athletic club membership'."
Now if we could only convince the schools themselves to make these fees non-mandatory....
Posted by: Zachary Smith at September 2, 2003 10:39 AM
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