Bragging About Financial Need

In a yearly ritual that should have died out with black-and-white TV, school districts around the country have finished toting up a meaningless statistic usually referred to as "college scholarship earnings." Thursday's P&C touts the setting of a new record by the Class of 2011.

Who will break with tradition first and shout, "The emperor has no clothes"?

I have blogged on this nonsensical practice previously, so I won't bore you with the process of how the sausage is made. Suffice it to say that the monetary total is not earnings, will not be received by the student, and frequently has nothing to do with scholarship. Oh, yes, the student will enroll at one college and receive its financial aid package, usually a combination of grants and work-study, all based on demonstrated financial need. The only "scholarship" involved is that the student was accepted to the institution.

Forget the overall totals. Every year someone who usually performs valuable service is set to work to gather all the numbers for publication, thus taking away time that could be spent usefully. We haven't always done it this way, and I haven't had the interest to find out when the practice started and spread like a cancer.

It's time to stop and gather statistics that are actually useful, starting with how many students who graduate from the high school in question have graduated from college four or five years later.