What is very disturbing is that our home state university offers far more academic scholarship money to out of state students than residents. In point of fact, my friend's daughter pays more than her out of state roommate at our state university. The daughter was in the top 10 of her class and an excellent academic and participatory record. Our state doesn't offer any real money to stellar resident academic performers. They use it on out of state students.
If so, it is to enhance the educational experience of in state students. It's very simple, somehow (because I have no idea how) that an academically stellar student from another state makes the educational experience offered by this State university better than an academically stellar student from in state. To me, this assertion is not much different from how diversity contributes to SA experience.
Exactly how does a kid with the same background (socioeconomic background, white collar job family, same European ethnicity, also from suburbs, etc. etc. etc.) from a neighboring state enhance the instate student's experience?
Exactly how does a kid with the same background (socioeconomic background, white collar job family, same European ethnicity, also from suburbs, etc. etc. etc.) from a neighboring state enhance the instate student's experience?
If the state didn't give out scholarships to out of state students, this would be less of an issue as I wouldn't be subsidizing another child while expecting to pay the full ride for mine.
I don't know that universities use tuition to fund scholarships, at least none that I'm familiar with. And most universities argue that tuition alone does not cover the full cost of educating each student (perhaps we can laugh at that, although it's certainly true of the academies). Here's a good discussion on that topic with data:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1880012-cost-of-education-versus-tuition-p1.html
Scholarships are usually private endowments or sliced from a university's general endowment. If you are donating to a university, then I would agree that you might be subsidizing scholarships whether in-state or out-of-state.
I don't know that universities use tuition to fund scholarships, at least none that I'm familiar with. And most universities argue that tuition alone does not cover the full cost of educating each student (perhaps we can laugh at that, although it's certainly true of the academies).
I don't disagree that the matter of subsidizing out of state students is an issue that deserves some level of scrutiny, at least in some places. However, having lived in upstate NY for the first 30 years of my life, and in Virginia and NC for the remaining 33 years, I can assure you that even with all the caveats you mention, people from different regions of the country are still very different people. They are raised differently. They may live in the burbs but they are still influenced by living in a rural or non-rural economy. They speak differently. They use different expressions for the same thing. Some areas people use "Sir" or "Ma'am" at the end of almost every sentence while in other areas you very seldom hear that. They will see things differently and are therefore still diverse.
A brief example. Up north the expression "Please honey" (or "whatever honey") is quite common. In the south they use "sugar", or more often "shug" in place of honey to mean the same thing. It took my northern mother 5 years to realize that my southern nieces name was NOT shug.