The New York Times reported today that Baylor University in Waco, TX last June offered to give its admitted freshmen a $300 bookstore credit for retaking the SAT and $1,000 a year in merit scholarship aid for boosting their score by a minimum of 50 points.

The results are now in and out of 3,000 incoming freshmen 961 students received the bookstore credit and 150 the scholarship aid.  This means the school “paid” the students over $288,000 for the store credits and $150,000 for the scholarship aid this year alone.  Multiply the scholarship aid times the average four years that a student spends at college and the total bill could come up close to $1 million just so the school can raise its national profile.

According to Baylor’s school newspaper The Lariat the average SAT score rose from 1200 to 1210 which isn’t exactly a move the needle type improvement but since the scores are part of the formula for college rankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report every little bit apparently helps as far as Baylor is concerned.

While some educators have critcized Baylor for their actions John Barry, the university’s vice president for communications and marketing says the decision was primarily driven by the school’s desire to offer more merit based aid to students who didn’t have enough time to qualify for the aid.

Yet as it states in Baylor’s very own strategic plan labeled Baylor 2012 one of the major goals is to bolster its ranking in U.S. News & World Report. The school currently ranks at number 76 in the 2009 survey.

For some students this effort seems unfair as it is offered to only the freshmen and not to other students.  But their scores wouldn’t help the school improve its rankings so in that vein their is no incentive to make them the same offfer.

In some ways the administrators at Baylor are very smart as they have figured out a way to game the system, possibly improve their rankings and appear as if they are truly helping some of their newe students.

But in reality Baylor, although not usually considered part of the politically correct academic left has a bigger goal in mind and that is money.  Even with what seems like a large expenditure to raise their rankings along with a higher ranking comes more potential students who will pay tuition or obtain student loans and that will eventually fatten the coffers of the school.  They aren’t being altruistic, they are just running a business at the students expense.

 

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