Private colleges should consider tuition reduction incentives

As college acceptance season rolls around and class registration ends, students are thinking about which schools to attend in the future. Their decision is based off several different factors, such as the distance from home, their strengths, and most importantly, the college’s cost. Offering students reduced tuition is a beneficial idea for private universities.

One of the greatest reasons to offer reductions on tuition fees is that it reduces the socioeconomic divide between students. Less financially-sound students are less likely to be able to attend university, for, according to College Data, the tuition for an average private university is 34,740 dollars per school year. However, if private universities offered reduced tuition to students with high grades, more hardworking, economically-disadvantaged students will be able to attend excellent private schools without worrying about debt.

Reducing the tuition cost would also provide more incentives for students to earn good grades in school. Since the students see a direct reward from their achievements, they are more likely to be more motivated and strive to achieve their best, both of which are traits that are crucial to careers later in life. Speaking of future careers, getting paid for their work is a more realistic reflection of the modern workforce, and the new graduates will be more competent, which benefits both employers and society as a whole.

When cash incentives are offered, more minority students become enrolled in these programs. According to an article by the New York Times, when the National Math and Science Initiative provided monetary benefits to South High Community School students who scored well on Advanced Placement tests, and more black and Hispanic students took AP courses and exams. Not only do the cash incentives have the potential to close the socioeconomic divide, they may also be able to close racial achievement gaps.

However, like all revolutionary ideas, cash incentives have a dark side behind them. They can inadvertently promote cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty. An influx of cheating would defeat the entire purpose of the reward system, for students would not be gaining any knowledge and they would be getting rewarded for unethical behavior, which would lead to problems in the future.

On the same note, higher grades do not always correspond with a greater understanding of the topic. According to Business Insider, grade inflation is rampant in American high schools, which leads to thousands of students with unearned A’s. On the flip side, several prestigious private universities, such as Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, practice grade deflation, which would make it harder for students to reap the hypothetical cash rewards.

Some may argue that a solid future career is a large enough incentive. Public schools are already underfunded and a monetary incentives program may be too expensive for them to handle. The tuition is needed to go towards staff, not the students who are already receiving an education.

In the end, schools should have the flexibility to do what is best for them. In general, private universities will be able to deal with the shortcomings of cash incentives and their students would benefits the most from them. Maybe one day in the future universities will offer cash incentives.

Article by MoCo Student staff writer Ashley Ye of Richard Montgomery High School

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