State grant and scholarship programs for college students increasingly favor students who aren’t needy, according to a new report, the Washington Post reports. The report, “Beyond Need and Merit [1],” comes from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Ostensibly, it recommends that states eliminate the distinction between need-based aid and merit aid [2] and instead award all grant aid by a simple formula that considers both. But what the report really advocates is that all states base their grant programs primarily on need. Its top recommendation: “Focus resources on students whose chance of enrolling and succeeding in college will be most improved by the receipt of state support.”
A surprisingly large number of states don’t do that…