Scholarships need to grow with tuition
Graduating students deserve monetary compensation along with diplomas

Inflation is a natural and essential part of the American economy. It’s inevitable that prices will slowly rise as the value of the dollar gradually dwindles. In the past couple of decades inflation has run particularly rampant among universities, especially private schools.

However, it seems to me that certain aspects of the education system fail to follow inflation trends.

It’s painfully obvious to TCU students that as their tuitions continue to grow, their merit-based scholarships remain uncomfortably stagnant.

Since I’ve been a student here, I’ve witnessed more than a few friends with scholarships who have to transfer because they couldn’t afford tuition increases. If their financial aid had gone up, too, they’d still be students here.

Yes, award scholarships do rise about $200 for incoming freshman each year, but current students are left empty-handed while they see high school graduates being granted the same scholarships they received but with more money attached to it. Why should an incoming freshman in the fall of 2001 with a Dean’s Scholarship get approximately $3,200 more than the current college senior with the same grant, when the senior was unable to see his scholarship grow along with the tuition he was paying?

There are two ways this problem can be easily remedied. One, if grants don’t escalate each year for current students, then tuition shouldn’t either.

If we’re stuck with the same scholarship each year, we should be paying the same tuition we did as freshman. This way, the tuition can still be raised, but it would only apply to new students.

Secondly, the opposite could be done to increase grants for students each year in proportion with the tuition hikes. No one is getting the better end of the bargain here. Students wouldn’t be ripping off the school or vice-versa any longer.

I would like to take a moment to commend TCU for keeping the tuition low, at least by the standards of most private universities. This is a great service to students who fail to receive merit awards and who don’t qualify for financial aid. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter what the tuition is for students on merit-based scholarships.

TCU uses the relatively low tuition as a primary tool to recruit students. However, what they fail to inform high school students of is that by offering low scholarship awards the affects of the low tuition are virtually nullified.

For instance, when I was a high school senior, TCU awarded me with a $5,400-a-year Dean’s Scholarship, the second highest given by the school. The other college I considered was Trinity University in San Antonio. After tuition, fees and housing, Trinity’s total tuition was approximately $5,000 more than TCU’s. But Trinity offered me the equivalent of the Dean’s Scholarship, which was also about $5,000 more than the grant TCU offered me.

Despite the appearance of being cheaper, TCU was no less expensive for me than other schools that TCU brags about being more affordable than.

If overall scholarships aren’t going to be raised to the standards set by other private universities, then I believe students are at least entitled to have their merit-based awards increased in accordance with the tuition.

When I graduate in a little more than two years and assuming grants are raised by about $200 a year, I’ll be expecting an extra $1,200 to go along with my diploma.

After all, I think TCU receiving a little less revenue is well worth the cost of treating its students with fairness and honesty.

Jordan Blum is a sophomore broadcast journalism major from New Orleans.
He can be reached at (j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu.)

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