Pomona Professor on Bhutto's Death

Tahir Andrabi, a Pomona economics professor, gives his assessment. He wants democracy and after Bhutto, says that it will be hard to achieve. You don't say?

In my view, Bhutto, the socialist socialite, probably wouldn't have been that good for Pakistan, anyways.

UPDATE 12/30: Far left yahoo tries to suggest that Musharraf ought to be a Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow because of his declaration of martial law. To say it is a stretch would be to give him more credit than he deserves.

Pomona College's New Aid Policy in the News

Something caught my eye in today's New York Times. For reasons I don't entirely understand Pomona has been appearing quite frequently in The New York Times, while CMC, even after the Day gift, has yet to appear. Media bias, much?

In any event, the article in question details the impact of Harvard's and other schools' new aid policy that effectively eliminates loans.

Pomona's President Oxtoby is quoted as follows:

“It could lead to schools’ doing this sort of thing because they want to be part of the top group,” David W. Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, said of Harvard’s move. If that meant those colleges had to reduce the number of their low-income students, Dr. Oxtoby said, “that would be terrible, exactly the wrong outcome.” (Pomona itself, where full costs are more than $45,000, does not provide merit aid.)

Putting aside the question of whether or not it would be a bad thing if there were more middle class students and fewer poor students attending college, why doesn't Pomona offer merit aid? Pomona's priorities are all out of whack. We know from past posts that it does offer aid for illegal immigrants instead of legal immigrants. Claremont McKenna offers McKenna scholarships to attract the best and brightest. The McKenna scholarships only problem, insofar as I can tell, is that it only applies to early decision students.

While this Claremont McKenna policy hurts middle-income and poor students who aren't able to shop around for the best aid package, it does align CMC on the side of merit.

Why doesn't Pomona join that club?
UPDATE (12/30):
Every once and again, I'm happy to be wrong. I was mistaken when I stated that the McKenna scholarships apply only to early decision candidates. They do not. Applicants for that scholarship must get their application submitted before the 1st of December.

I would prefer a system in which everyone applied on the same date for the same merit scholarship. I would prefer the existence of a merit scholarship at Pomona to no merit scholarship at all. My apologies for the error! Thank you to the many people who wrote in to correct me.