Recently, I attended and interview with Matthew Sapienza with a few others as part of the class. We had an interesting discussion with him about tuition and the different ways students could be able to afford college. We also gained some interesting tidbits of information about the inner workings of his field like how the image of the former Chancellor getting a golden parachute is not as ridiculous as we made it out to be. Apparently he denied a raise several times over his career and the golden parachute was a way for the board to honor him and to make up for all the times that he sacrificed his raise and did his job as well as he could.
With that, I would like to present an idea for us to contemplate when writing our papers as a potential funding model for students. We have already seen the Lumina Foundation’s interpretation of what students should pay for college (for those that do not remember, remember the model of 10). Coupled with the discussions with him and these considerations, I recently saw a random post from Tumblr on my news feed on Facebook. It had this idea for making tuition proportional to one’s grades. Basically, the idea is that in conjunction with financial aid, you have a school where the better grades you get, the higher amount of financial aid you receive. If you have a 4.0 for example, you would get a free tuition scholarship akin to Macaulay on top of the financial aid you would normally receive. Any grade lower would have you pay tuition equivalent to the proportional amount. The financial aid would still be there to deter poorer students from struggling disproportionately. Additionally, like law school, a buffer could be in place that counts A+ grades as weighted grades. This means that when receiving an A+, you would get more money in your financial aid package as an incentive for doing better. A+ grades can also make up for lower grades in other areas and can help make up the difference in aid.
This is by no means a crazy idea. Some states pay their students for getting good grades on AP exams and paying students is a considered idea for people. Such an idea would cut the need for students who cannot afford college to get a job and it would allow them to focus on their schoolwork more in order to get the requisite grades needed to afford it fully. It serves as reinforcement so that students work to the best of their potential.
What do you guys think? Could this be a potential financial model for your hypothetical “dream” college?
