The New York Times has reported that 28 of the nation’s top universities will soon change their guidelines for financial aid. Those schools making the changes include such top-name universities as Yale, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It is encouraging to see that these schools, which are some of the most expensive in the country, feel obligated to give students in financial need an opportunity to attend classes on their prestigious campuses. For decades, higher education in the United States has been an exclusive enclave of the rich, the brilliant or those with unequaled athletic prowess.
Increasing need-based aid should bring new perspectives to higher education and help administrators find some of that longed-for diversity, which is so often praised on most campuses. But as painful as it is for some people to hear it, a college education is not a right. Entrance to a university is something that an individual should and must work to obtain. Those people who do work hard in their early years and obtain high grades and respectable test scores, and can also demonstrate some sort of social responsibility by being active in sports or other organizations, should be given the rewards of scholarships and grants.
Therefore, a move toward adjusting standards for need-based aid should be taken with due consideration to ensure that the best and the brightest do not get left behind. When colleges and universities attempt to bring about social change through admissions and scholarships, they run the risk of defeating their main purpose — to educate those who want and can handle a university education. Let’s not see the University of Oregon, or any other school, extend financial aid to those who may need the money but don’t have the academic skills.
It is, without a doubt, justified to ensure that those who deserve to attend a university but cannot because of financial reasons should be given some financial aid. But it is highly unjustified to give students aid based solely on their financial ability. Be they poor or rich, if they are bad students they should not attend a university.
Sadly, however, our capitalist system ensures that most poor students who do not have university-level skills do not attend, but many rich students who should not have even graduated from high school are welcomed with open arms.
It is not a perfect system, but universities should not attempt to change that with scholarships. The fact remains there are those who qualify for need-based aid and should receive it, and there are those who qualify but should not take aid from others.

Legislative session ends
Following a walk-out from the Capitol building by most of the Democratic lawmakers, our legislators were hard-pressed to finish most of their business in a timely manner. But they did it, and at 5:15 a.m. Saturday, Oregon’s 71st Legislative Assembly adjourned.
Much was accomplished during the tumultuous session that witnessed wrangling across the aisle over budget issues and other pieces of legislative business. Yet by many news accounts, in the early hours of the morning on Saturday there was much back-slapping and praise for a session that finally ended with Oregon schools getting more money, the Oregon Department of Transportation receiving repair funds and an assurance for adequate hospital staffing.
It is good to see that students who fall prey to date-rape drugs now know that if their assailant is ever caught, tougher laws enacted by this Legislature will increase the rapist’s prison time because of the use of date-rape drugs.
But for all the handshakes and smiles leaving Salem lately, there should be some concern over the lack of support for higher education. It took months for legislators to get around to filling in some of the holes the governor made, despite claims of support by many legislators.
And while it is understandable that the budget process takes some time, there should have been more concrete work to ensure higher education was properly funded early on in the session. The guesswork, rumors, suspicions, inaccuracies and fears that pervaded during most of the discussion about the higher education budget seemed to protract the process longer then necessary. This made several instructors and classified workers worried about losing their jobs, and students fearful they would not be able to afford a university education.
It may be how the system works, but in the case of higher education when the benefits are clear, state lawmakers should have made a stronger effort early on to assure those in higher education that the system would not suffer too much.