Need-blind?

By Stephanie (Age 15, St. Stephen's)

Nowadays, many families are suffering from financial problems and are not able to afford the extremely expensive tutoring fees for their children. Colleges, especially in the US, used to be need-blind. However, they no longer have enough money to afford scholarships for poor families. Therefore, these colleges ended up not offering any scholarships at all. Smart people from poor families therefore do not get the chance to study in these colleges.

Clever kids from poor families are suffering from paying college fees. Despite their intelligence, colleges consider their family backgrounds which makes it impossible for those people to get in. This is not totally the colleges' fault. They would like to have more intelligent students but they do not have money to afford them. Money did not used to play such an important role in education but now, even the universities do not have a choice. I do not think money should play an important role in education but considering the financial status of the world, colleges have no choice but to deny poor students' applications.

This system is not fair for anyone. First, it is not fair to the poor people for obvious reasons. Although they have a clever brain, they don't get a chance to be educated. Second, it is also not fair for the university itself. By only accepting rich students, the quality and standard of the whole school will also decrease. They do not have a choice. With less money, they have to accept students who can pay for them in the aim for the school to continue working.

To solve the problem we have in front of us, people who are applying for colleges now can apply to other colleges which can offer them more financial aid. If the poor student is that brilliant, it wouldn't matter which university he gets into. He or she would stil be as good in other schools and when he or she graduates, he or she can still find a good job. These people can also prepare themselves so when opportunities come, they wouldn't miss it because of financial problems.

There is one way to help the poor students, and that is to wait. The only thing we can do is to wait. We can wait until the economy recovers and by then, the universities will no longer look for wealthy students only. When the economy is better, universities will become wealthier and less eager to find wealthy students. Also, they will realize that the school's standard and quality has been decreasing. To solve the problem, they will be need-blind again and will no longer care if the student is wealthy or not.

In conclusion, we can face the financial problem positively and maybe find a job to earn more money. We can also put more effort into our studies and maybe someone would appreciate our effort and let us get in their college.