How Scholarships Morphed into Financial Aid

Abstract

Before World War II, academically excellent students from families unable to afford college for them could apply for scholarships available to outstanding students, but scholarships were scarce. The federal government itself did not then make direct grants to individual high school students to enable them to attend college, as it does now. Thomas Jefferson would doubtless have approved of scholarships to provide educational opportunities to high-ability students to attend, maybe even federal scholarships. In the course of advocating scholarships for able youngsters at the University of Virginia, Jefferson had written, “By that part of our plan [of education in Virginia] which prescribes the selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.” It is unlikely that Jefferson would have favored financial aid to students of lesser abilities. And he probably would have been astounded by “athletic” scholarships. His proposal sought students who were intellectually outstanding. Athletic scholarships are not merit-based scholarships in the Jeffersonian sense of rewarding intellectual achievements and potentialities. Varsity athletes Acad. Quest. (2010) 23:298–310 DOI 10.1007/s12129-010-9174-y