With the end of senior year fast approaching, many seniors are applying to colleges and are looking for scholarships. Lets face it; most of us aren’t sports stars who will get a full tuition scholarship to play at the school of our choosing.
Unfortunately, it seems that we almost have to be a sports star to receive a decent scholarship.
According to braintrack.com, about three billion dollars a year is awarded overall to students based on their academics yearly, with an average of two to three thousand dollars per scholarship.
The NCAA’s website, ncaa.com, states that they give about $1.5 billion dollars every year to Division I and II schools, which is given to athletes based on the schools discretion; this money doesn’t count the amount of money that universities give to their student athletes.
While sports are very entertaining,and athletes are needed to play for schools, academics are more important.
Not to say to get rid of the athletic scholarships because sports play a key role in creating the unity and spirit of a school; schools should simply make more academic scholarships available to their students instead of investing most of their scholarship money into athletics.
Penn State Main alone sets aside $11 billion to recruit athletes, according to fldcu.org; this money is awarded to athletes based on their skills, ability, and value to the institution.
However, smaller private schools such as Rosemont University have more money to give to students based on their academics. Rosemont’s top academic scholarship is $19,000, in comparison to their lowest level admissions scholarship of $6,000.
Let’s think about this situation for a second: in a few years, our generation will be running the U.S. and investing in its economy.
Since school funding is being cut, college tuitions are on the rise, and institutions have less and less opportunities to give money to students, which is why scholarships should be more academically focused.
Many students can’t afford a college tuition; if they can’t afford college, they won’t receive further education, and if they don’t further their education in some way, our generation will not be financially stable enough to boost America’s economy, nor educated enough to lead the nation well.
Colleges should keep in mind that the generation they are educating now will soon be the ones who pay the tax dollars that go into the federal funding they receive in the future; one would think that colleges would make the investment to ensure students can pay for their education.
Furthermore, the decision to give a student a scholarship should be fair and based on their academic performance- the reason to attend a post graduation institution is to further one’s education.
As a student who would benefit a lot from an academic based scholarship, more academic scholarships should be made available.
Sources:
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/nli/nli/document+library/athletic+scholarship
http://www.braintrack.com/financial-aid-articles/articles/scholarship-overview
