olldflame wrote:While grandfathering in all current students may seem a fair (although most definately generous) solution, it would raise som questions in my mind. What about the students/families who WERE fully aware the scholarship program was ending but chose to attend those schools anyway? Do we include them?
How much would this cost Liberty? Let´s just look at LCA, which seems to be where the primary problem lies. I´d be interested to see what the enrollment is by grade, which would allow for an estimate of what the cost would be for grandfathering everyone. At current tuition rates, we are looking at roughly $85,000 per student if they attended a total of 10 years at 10% or 4 years of HS at 25%. Obviously, that LU tuition number will go up in the future.
Let´s just pull a number out of the air and say that when you add up the % earned of all the current students it comes to the equivilant of 400 full scholarships. That would be 34 million dollars. I don´t know what the tower is going to cost, but I´m pretty sure it will be less than that.
LU never promised to build the tallest tower in Lynchburg to the local residents. Not even in the fine print
As for those being aware of the scholarships ending why would you not include those handful of people?
As for your accounting, the first thing to to realize is that these scholarships have pretty much been a fixed 'cost' to LU for decades. I'm sure the number of students utilizing it has grown, but not enough to break the bank
In your scenario the student cost would end after 10 years, the every day costs, electricity maintenance etc, would continue for much longer on The Tower
If one really wanted to counter your argument, why not take the money spent on The Tower in escrow to cover a significant portion of the 'cost' of the scholarship?
Will The Tower ever give money to the University as an Alum?
I've heard both sides of the debate and both have very valid arguments. The Scholarships v Tower comparison isn't really a valid one, but it points out the bigger problems. The first is LU seems to go out of the way to look for bad Publicity. If LU has more money than it knows what to do with, why cut the scholarships? The argument that LU has more money in other scholarships doesn't really matter. It's the people in the Middle being affected the most. Plus, it's not a guarantee that the students will qualify for them. Like buying a lottery ticket: I may win $2 or $200,000. Both are available to me with purchase.
Secondly, is LU about People or Palaces? When you look at the money spent on The Tower, on the Athletic Department to be #FBSReady while at the same time cutting this program, you can see where someone could ask that question. In the grand scheme of LU's budget this program is not that big of a deal