Harvard study questions benefits of state-based merit scholarships

Merit scholarships, which provide money for college for students based on their achievements in high school, may be good options for those seeking financial aid for college, have a significantly impressive grade point average, do well on their standardized tests, and like the idea of completing their undergraduate studies in their home state.

However, research has emerged from the Harvard Kennedy School showing that merit scholarships may not be the best option for everyone who needs financial aid for school, as reported by Slate Magazine. According to the findings - based on an examination of records from a merit scholarship program in Massachusetts - merit scholars tended to take longer to complete college, and were more likely than other student to leave school before they were able to graduate.

"This is a very unusual example of a situation in which we make money available to students, and they actually end up worse off," study coauthor Joshua Goodman, assistant policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Slate Magazine.

In addition, one of the goals of merit scholarships is to provide an option for students who would not receive higher education otherwise due to limited financial resources. However, the Harvard Study also shows that the Massachusetts merit scholarship usually gets used by students who were already had necessary resources for attending college well before they qualified for the award.

Michigan is cited by the news source as another example of a state where a merit scholarship program hasn't worked as well as was hoped. While more than 30 percent of high schoolers in the Great Lakes State qualified for the state scholarship, only 7 percent of black high school seniors received high enough scores on their standardized testing. According to Slate, this disparity resulted in a lawsuit that has since been dropped.

"Most of the money goes to subsidize kids from upper-income, upper-middle-income [families] who would have been going to college anyway," Don Heller, dead of Michigan State University's College of Education, told Slate. "If the goal of states is to get more students to college, then merit scholarships are not very efficient."

On the other hand, a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that merit scholarships, in fact, may make students 5 to 7 percent more likely to enroll in college, according to the news provider.

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