Remember Holden Thorp, who was chancellor at UNC-CH for a few years? Where’d he go? Answer: to Washington University in St. Louis. What’s he doing? Pushing the university to double its percentage of students who receive Pell grants, which is to say, students from relatively poor families. Read all about it in this piece by leftist writer Stephen Burd. Burd doesn’t think the plan goes nearly far enough in “improving” the university with regard to “economic diversity.”
The glaring problem, of course, is that for every Pell grant student the university accepts, it has to reject a non-Pell student who in all likelihood would have had a stronger academic record. Thorp and Burd may believe that this is an advance for social justice, but all it will really do is to lower the university’s academic standards.Besides, going to a prestigious, research-oriented university is often a poor educational choice for students. Many would get a superior college education at a smaller school where the faculty is more engaged with the undergrads.
