I bet the view from your ivory tower is quite lovely. But let’s put in a little perspective. Many people who have been proponents to the raising of the Bright Futures standards come at it from the idea that it is there to reward hard work, good grades and service.
Really, it was created to help students of all backgrounds accomplish their scholastic dreams and goals. It has become an entitlement to middle-class people who have a better opportunity to gain the criteria needed to get the scholarship. The ironic thing is that most people who receive Bright Futures can most likely afford college expenses, paid for by mommy and daddy.
Meanwhile, your peer is working two jobs after school, doesn’t have the time to study for the SAT or afford the cost of Princeton Review, and will graduate no less intelligent than you, but going to night school instead of a university. There is a direct correlation to wealth and academic success and anyone choosing to ignore that is simply trying to legitimize their own privilege to the program. It was meant as a program to encourage students to strive for college and hopefully gain the possibility, and in Florida we are very lucky to receive it.
However, in today’s economy, social climbing purely on merit is all but dead. The American dream of working hard and one day having a little house in the suburbs with the two-car garage is very much out of reach for most people, not because of lack of intelligence and hard work, but opportunity. College is a stepping stone necessary to this dream and is becoming increasingly out of reach.
Disagree with me if you will, but access to a good education, including college, should be a right to everyone, not only those who get a certain GPA or SAT score. Our falling scholastic standards are not because our expectations are too low, but because we only give a few people the tools to reach those expectations.
If you may be speculating, I did receive the full amount of Bright Futures with meeting and surpassing the criteria, so I don’t resent the program, but the people who make it into an idealized even playground.
But if you truly feel that Bright Futures is going to people who don’t work hard enough for it, or just don’t deserve to compete with you on that level because they are lazy, then get rid of it and give the money to people that could use it and need it.
Make it a need-based scholarship, then it won’t be an entitlement program for the middle class and beyond. It will give opportunity to a wider range of people to go to college. People who are amazingly intelligent and resourceful, but perhaps didn’t get that arbitrary 1290 but still deserve the opportunity.
