Editorial: Tuition waivers sending the wrong message
At the November board meeting, IVCC board members
discussed the usage of academic and athletic tuition waivers. While the IV
Leader fully supports the leadership program and the opportunities for financial
aid, it seems there are questionable factors regarding the waivers. The first
is, why are there so many athletic waivers and so few academic waivers? True,
there are more students playing on each team than participating in specific
organizations, but isn’t that point of these waivers? The athletic waivers are
clearly used to draw athletes to IVCC. Surely offering an equal number of
waivers for academic programs would draw more top-of-the class students to IVCC
to participate in programs like Theatre, Art, Journalism and Creative Writing,
programs which either receive only a hand full of waivers or none at all. We
aren’t, by any means, suggesting that athletics receive fewer tuition waivers,
simply that academic programs receive the same number.
The second questionable factor would be with academic
requirements. As it stands now, students are required to pass at least 12 credit
hours with a 2.0 gpa, unless they play sports, in which case they must only be
eligible to play based on that sport’s requirement, which in most cases is lower
than a 2.0 gpa.
What do these two factors say about the values held by IVCC?
First of all, it says the college doesn’t expect much of its
tuition-waiver-worthy students, if obtaining a 2.0 is good enough. Not to say
that tuition waiver receiving students should have a 4.0, but even a 2.5 or 3.0
would make us view these students as more deserving of free tuition.
Further more, it suggests that athletics are more important
than academics. It suggests that the college offers more opportunity to athletes
than it does to students with academic or leadership talents. It suggests that
it is okay to not do well in school, as long as you do well enough to play on
the team. It suggests that the college would rather recruit athletes than
academically talented students.
Is this the truth? Is this really how the college feels? We
severely doubt that is the case, but the college needs to take a look at the
message it is sending with tuition waiver usage.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with supporting athletics, but
in a place that was built for education, it is wrong to support athletics more
than academics and by awarding 169 athletic tuition waivers and 36 academic
tuition waivers.
In the coming months, the board will be looking into tuition
waiver usage. It is our hope that they will see to it that the students
receiving tuition waivers truly deserve them, for talent, for skill, for hard
work and most importantly for a commitment to education. We also hope that they
will not be deterred from supporting the tuition waiver program by the price tag
that comes with the program, indeed it is a small price to pay to support
students who bring talent, both athletic and academic to our college.