[zalambar]

Oddly I don't see any mention in the article or linked paper of financial aid as a contributing factor to these decisions.

I recall my college social circle being intently aware of GPA requirements for continued merit based financial aid. Planning course schedules to try to keep quarterly grades above our individual cutoffs was a common practice. That same pressure influenced willingness to pursue minors, preparation for masters programs, or double majors. Students in danger of losing their financing absolutely considered which related majors they might transfer into which might offer better odds of a successful degree.

Sadly I think this lead to several students who literally could not afford to risk pursuing their preferred subjects.

[eli_gottlieb]

Damn right! When I was in college everyone knew that despite Commonwealth College (the honors program) offering merit scholarships, you didn't want to join if you were in STEM.

Why? Because they imposed a minimum GPA requirement (which started at 3.2/4.0 and went up over the years), also additional coursework requirements (you had to take a certain number of "honors courses") and a thesis requirement.

Now, maintaining good grades and doing an undergrad thesis isn't that bad. Maintaining good grades and doing an undergrad thesis while also filling your honors coursework when your department's cooperation with the honors program is in its infancy and the honors college thinks only humanities subjects should count for the Special Honors Sequence, THAT was the problem. Please note that yes, you had to do a Special Honors Sequence and an Honors Gen Ed.

The result was predictable: people would try to "dodge out" by doing the easiest Honors courses they could get, because Honors courses usually had nothing to do with your actual degree focus.

Thus, I have been through a seminar about a neurologist working on African baboons, and another one about Judaic bioethics. My honors thesis had to be classified as an Independent Study, along with much of the undergrad research work I did, and without that stuff I would never have filled my honors requirements without screwing over my Computer Science requirements.

The "merit aid" bureaucrats are often not only complete idiots, but operating on a basic assumption that Merit Means Humanities.