Asshats

This might be the stupidest legislation I've ever seen (though, with the way things are going, I'm sure that's a bar that is set too low):

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article.aspx?aID=112823.54928.124964

Now perhaps there's something I'm not seeing in this article that proves that the scholarships that colleges and universities in Arkasas provide for students go disproportionately to wealthy students. Or that they never go to students with financial need. But I don't see anyone making any such argument other than a blanket claim that providing a lot of scholarship money to students somehow steals from the poor to give to the rich. Are they claiming that scholarship funds come from the tuition poor students pay? I don't get this at all. Sounds more to me like they are trying to make it harder for anyone to get a college education.

From the perspective of the university where I work and whose scholarships I award, this would cripple the ability of many of our students to pay and, thus, limit educational options for middle class and poor students. The vast majority of our scholarship and institutional funds go to students with demonstrated financial need. Yes, we have some strictly recruitment awards, but that is the smallest pot of money in our gift aid pot. Our largest scholarship program run by the Office of Student Aid, the Trustee Scholarships, is strictly for students who are Pell eligible. Our endowed scholarships (which are run by various awarding units such as Student Aid, academic colleges, the alumni society) have criteria that are written by the donors. However, I can say that of the sixty-four endowed scholarships that are specific to my campus and for which I am responsible for awarding, only ten have no financial need criteria. Plus we have seventy-three campus specific Trustee Scholarships. I cannot see how, in this sort of scholarship system, the Arkansas plan would be robbing the poor to give money to the rich. It would just place one more handicap on the poor and middle income families' ability to get their kids a college education.

But then, I shouldn't expect any other sort of logic from anyone who is a member of the GOP, I suppose.