Editorial: Don’t enforce merit scholarship altruism

So let’s say your father is a titan of his industry, rolling in more cash than a human being… So let’s say your father is a titan of his industry, rolling in more cash than a human being could possibly figure out what to do with. Let’s say for your 16th birthday, a $360,000 luxury car complete with uniformed driver emerged from your father’s deep pockets. Let’s also say, come your senior year in high school, you get offered a full athletic scholarship to play Division I football at a state university.

Now here’s the question: Should you take the money, which alone represents the amount of value under daddy’s index fingernail? Or should you invoke utilitarian principle by refusing the award, potentially making college more affordable for another, less privileged student-athlete?

We don’t think it’s so easy to answer, but you might think differently. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly certainly does.

Last week, O’Reilly came out swinging on his show saying that Justin Combs — son of Sean “Diddy” Combs, a hip-hop mogul worth about $500 million — received a full scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles to play football. A right-wing pundit who normally decries any suggestion of downward wealth redistribution (taxes on the wealthy), O’Reilly displayed a dramatic change of tune — he wants Justin Combs to not take the money. Since Justin’s father publicly supports President Barack Obama — the wealth redistributor-in-chief, in O’Reilly’s mind — O’Reilly thinks it’s only fair to let Justin taste his father’s ideology (since giving away a merit scholarship is obviously the same as paying taxes).

Whether a cynical partisan jab or a genuine appeal to fairness, O’Reilly’s position is reckless. The same goes to anyone else who similarly jumps to one side or another of this complex issue. Instead of creating binding institutional rules (or social pressures) that direct people like Justin Combs to either (1) refuse the scholarship or (2) receive the scholarship, individual choice must be respected. That is, if the Combses of the world decide to return the money, all power to them, but if they don’t, we cannot hold it against them.

The altruistic spirit is a respectable one, for sure. If we — including Bill O’Reilly — had perfect information that identified precisely which of the meritorious college applicants needed money and which did not, paying the “have-nots” and merely recognizing the “haves” could make sense, at least on the grounds of altruism and efficiency. Think of all of the unadulterated study hours we’d create, with more students not having to work to pay spiraling tuition rates after receiving a merit scholarship returned by a rich applicant.

Even if that system would improve college affordability, however, good luck finding perfect information. In the real world, an applicant’s parents might show seven houses on their tax return, but that is not enough to conclude the applicant couldn’t use the money. It’s entirely possible that some family situations (like strong self-reliance values) prevent wealthy applicants from accessing their family fortunes.

Or, of course, the applicant could simply regard the money — separate from the recognition — as a worthy goal in itself, and we must stress: That thinking is not so illegitimate. There’s value and reason in why need-blind, merit scholarships exist. College admissions are a chance for young people to prove themselves based on the values of the respective institution, whether it be academics, athletics or both. Deserving students have the right to experience the fullest extent of that proof and to feel how much a school wants them. More practically, since only some schools would choose to mandate the utilitarian approach, reinforcement-seeking rich prospects would likely migrate to the less “progressive” schools, potentially creating another type of inequality.

Given the current state of financial desperation among many college students and wannabe undergrads, “efficient” redistribution of merit scholarship money would be nice in theory. But no one should force students of rich families to relinquish (or keep) their earned scholarships.