Scholarships

If anything is in vogue in the pedant's world, it has to be the number of scholarships given. Despite being a recipient of a full scholarship throughout my high school, I had initially struggled to comprehend the economic logic behind the giving away of scholarships. After all, how could a private, profit-maximising firm make a seemingly rational decision to waive off full tuition for a large percentage of students? Places like my present school have as much as 20% of the student population on some form of scholarship. But as I sailed through my junior year, I gradually started to comprehend the benefits of those scholarships. First of all, since most schools in my area work as close to perfect competition as can be thought of, most schools are price takers and therefore, all schools have to provide similar levels of scholarships in order to keep the students from leaving. (Although schools like Aitchison are exception as they have gained fame for being tough in giving out scholarships and hence, achieving the title of a highly selective school).The scholarship recipients are usually the brightest, fun-filled people there are. Its no surprise that schools can promote the image of being active in extra-curriculars because thanks to those scholarships, they have state level debaters, actors or whatever. And it doesn't take someone to be a rocket scientist to understand that the scholarships attract the world distinction holders about whom the schools can brag about for the next hundred years or so. The scholars would also be the only ones who wold be likely to get into the top colleges and promote the schools reputation as a 'feeder' school to Harvard, Yale, Cornell etc. All the reasons in general and the last reason in particular go on to attract more students which in turn means more revenue for the school. Thus, a happy ending is achieved: the bright minds get full rides till A levels and the schools can brag about how many of their kids got into an Ivy league institution. Therefore, scholarships are NOT as worthless as everyone thinks.