The University of Texas — second only to Harvard in number of National Merit Scholars — is pulling out of the program because it can’t afford it. Meanwhile, the Daily Texan reports that Oklahoma is recruiting as many National Merit Scholars as possible.
UT may have a point here. It hosted 281 Merit Scholars last year at a cost of over $900,000. Not all of those Merit Scholars needed the money. Just because a kid is smart doesn’t mean he’s poor. So it might be a better use of those scholarship dollars to apply them to smart kids who are poor. But it doesn’t portend good things when the university says it can’t afford what it is paying, nor does it add any confidence when an admissions officer, confronted with the facts about how much Oklahoma is spending, says this:
“We’re not necessarily offering the kind of money they’re getting there. But we offer something else – this university, its diversity, the city of Austin.”
