For high school seniors, available financial aid packages have long served as important precursors for making up one's mind about where to attend college. At Virginia Tech, potential students can expect to receive their financial aid offering a few days after they've received their acceptance notifications.
It is very important for Tech to stay competitive with other state colleges when it comes to distributing financial aid. The last thing we would ever want would be to lose qualified applicants to other schools because we failed to put our financial aid offering out there fast enough.
For many students, a hefty financial aid package can make a huge difference. While it is understandable that aid announcements cannot released until an admissions decision has been made on the individual student, it is important for the two to coincide as much as possible. As long as Tech puts the financial aid offering out there early enough, students won't choose other schools based on their economic situations, but rather on academic merit and other important conditions.
Within the past couple weeks there has been a lot of discussion about the recently imposed diversity requirements for faculty. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has combated these requirements, arguing that making commitment to diversity an ideological requirement for faculty members is uncalled for. When such a huge push for diversity is being made on our campus, it's important to primarily analyze our current system on the admissions level, rather than focus on faculty influence and diversity initiatives.
Students from less affluent backgrounds rely a lot more on financial aid to help carry them through school. Especially during such trying economic times, more students than ever before are expecting financial aid to be an important factor in enrollment decisions.
If Tech truly wants to become a more diverse campus, these are the people we should be recruiting. These are the people who we should be offering a financially accessible education.
When it comes to offering financial aid, Tech should aim to be ahead of other state schools. The last thing we'd ever want would be to lose qualified applicants to other schools whose financial aid packages come through sooner.
The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries and Laurel Colella
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Who are you kidding? If you're a minority with average SAT scores and halfway decent grades you get a free ride on the gubment dime.
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This is a good assessment of how to improve diversity by the CT editorial board. Given recent demands on the CT to take down comment forums because people don't like to read the racist and objectionable comments of members of the Hokie Nation, or visitors at large; it may be useful to note that if Virginia Tech wants to decrease racism on campus and in the comments of their alumni, they should stop admitting racists. That would cut way back on what is perceived as the problem. Personally, I'd like to see the elimination of racism on campus and in comments on stories; however, if those opinions are out there, I would rather know about them and be able to confront them in a dialogue instead of hiding them by censoring comments in the CT.
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Every man/woman, community, society, nation, etc that has ever existed has been contrained by supply and resources. State and federal budgets allocate a various amounts of resources for education. Society basically decides how much of a priority it is (at our elected officials do through legislation and funding). With these contraints in mind, it is obviously a good idea to get everyone a good high school education, but with limited resources it may be good to help folks with high ability regardless of income. The smartest people are the ones that solve all of the problems, so it sort of seems like a no brainer to me.
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