Les Jones

East Tennessee > Tennessee Scholarships

There's a move to change the criteria for Tennessee's new college scholarships. Currently, students have to have either a 3.0 GPA or an ACT score of 19 (23 for home-schooled kids). The new criteria would be based solely on GPA and would ignore ACT scores. The short-term result would be that fewer students would qualify for scholarships, freeing up money for pre-school education.

But how long would that last? Schools and parents both want the maximum number of kids to go to college with free scholarships. Parents, because they want their kids to go to college, preferably for free. Schools, because it looks good if a high percentage of their students go on to college.

So, if scholarships are based solely on GPA, what will happen? Right. Rampant grade inflation. There's a reason objective test scores exist, and it's to prevent that very thing from happening.

Link via Bubba.