CNN asks this question:
Justin Combs worked hard in high school to improve his football game and earn a 3.75 GPA . He recently received a $54,000 merit-based scholarship to UCLA, where he’ll play football.
In April, Forbes named Justin Combs’ dad, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, the wealthiest artist in hip-hop. Some say the family should return Justin’s scholarship, arguing that Combs should pay for his son’s education and taxpayer money should go to students with greater financial need. Other say Justin Combs earned the scholarship through his grades and athletic ability, and deserves to keep it.
What do you think? Should the Combs family keep, return or donate the money? Should students with wealthy parents have access to merit-based scholarships and financial aid?
Here’s my question: Why is this even a question?
Justin Combs earned an athletic scholarship. It was based on merit, and he kept a 3.75 GPA as a student athlete to boot. if he was anyone else’s son other than the most famous hip-hop media mogul on the planet, this wouldn’t be asked. There’s nothing stopping P. Diddy from donating to UCLA in the amount of the scholarship too. But it shouldn’t be up to mob rule whether he does or not, nor should we be questioning the scholarship.
I can’t help but think that if Justin’s father was a hedge fund manager or CEO of a tech company, this wouldn’t even be newsworthy (and my opinion that he not give back the merit scholarship would still stand.) If I was completely cynical, I’d say this had something to do with race, but of course since Sean Combs is an extremely successful businessman who obviously raised a son with a fantastic work ethic and no small amount of physical skill, that can’t possibly be it either. Maybe it’s politics, but if anything, Republicans should be screaming bloody murder over this. Isn’t this exactly what they say the success story of a strong, intelligent black father raising a gifted son should be?
So again I’m baffled by why this is being asked at all. Again, should P. Diddy donate to UCLA in the amount of his son’s scholarship (or more than that?) Sure, if I were him, I’d make that happen, I can afford to. But I wouldn’t make my son give up something he earned with his own ability, especially a son trying to make his own way in the world in his father’s very long shadow. And we’re certainly not implying that Justin Combs didn’t earn a merit scholarship, right?
So unless one of those assumptions I made up there is wrong, why is CNN asking if he should return it outright? If this was Bill Gates son, or Angelina Jolie’s daughter, or Mitt Romney son, would this still be an issue?
I’d like to know.
Jeff Spender
Are you sure this is CNN and not Entertainment Tonight?
Because it’s just patently absurd that a cable news enterprise should be wasting time with this asinine crap. You know what might be better to cover? Rising tuition as a result of dwindling state budgets.
But noooooooooo, we have to talk about this because it’s tabloid journalism with mob opinions.
This isn’t news. It’s the coming of Idiocracy.
ETA: Drink Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes and shit. It’s what plants crave.
gaz
I don’t think he should be required to return the scholarship at all.
Requirement aside, I think it would cool to see the family donate to the school, or better yet, start a scholarship trust of their own.
Pay it forward. Karma works. Good PR isn’t so bad, either. More importantly, it’s the Right Thing(tm) to do.
ETA: My wife just raised a very good question. “How do we know this isn’t already the case?”
Jerzy Russian
The kid should keep his scholarship. He might want to make it in the world without his father’s help. The father should make a donation.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeff Spender:
Idiocracy came a while ago. It already has settled into the couch with its feet on the coffee table, and is yelling for you to bring it another beer.
amk
The kid earned it. teann can go fuck itself. The end.
jibeaux
I agree it would be a cool thing to do and Sean Combs probably has that much in his pocket right now, but the whole point of a merit scholarship is that it’s merit-based and not something-else-based. And, no, I’ve never heard the question asked of anyone before.
elm
Be completely cynical. The “problem” in this case is that he’s blackety-blackety-black and his father earned his money making blackety-blackety-black music.
Randy P
Is there another meaning of the words “based on merit” now?
Jeff Spender
@Gin & Tonic:
I have a horrible image in my head.
“Go away, I’m ‘batin’.”
-America, 2012
Mike Goetz
Concur. Rewarding genuine achievement is all we are asking for out of this society.
jrg
Bwahh! Ha, ha, ha, ha!
Barbara
Props to the kid, of course. But even greater props to institutions that give out all aid on the basis of need even as they maintain high academic standards. It’s just a better model. To boot, UCLA is, after all, a heavily state financed endeavor so giving scholarships to kids who are not in need would seem in some respects to undercut part of its public mission to make school as affordable as it can be for California residents.
And yes, it’s true that Sean Diddy Combs can donate what his son received (and then some, in reality) and will then get a tax break for doing so . . . Is that the model we aspire to?
(I’ll forgo turning this into a debate on college athletics, but let’s just say I think his athletic background was at least as important as his academic achievement, or his storied parentage — an aspect of America collegiate life that I loathe whether the athlete needs the money or not. At least the young Mr. Combs is unlikely to be exploited the way poorer athletes are.)
But no, I don’t see that he should be expected to return the money. Indeed, I don’t think it’s fair to attack this issue one student at a time. If anything, it’s a larger policy issue and different schools are justified in balancing it differently.
Aardvark Cheeselog
I dunno about the “shoulds” in the CNN bit, but as a liberal I think it is kind of sleazy for people to whom $54K is chump change to be applying for scholarships at all.
4tehlulz
@Aardvark Cheeselog: I can see why, though. It’s good to put on your resume if you’re looking for work on your own merit instead of daddy’s name.
PIGL
@Aardvark Cheeselog: maybe the young man wants to make his own way in the world? Just because his father is rich does not automatically make him rich. Not every wealthy family operates as a dynasty.
chopper
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
the kid applied for the scholarship, not his dad. maybe the kid doesn’t have 54 grand in his couch cushions. maybe the kid wants to make it on his own. maybe his dad wants him to make it on his own.
Yutsano
@Aardvark Cheeselog: He more than likely didn’t apply for it. Most athletic scholarships are awarded by the coach and the athletic department dependent upon the kid’s ability and grades etc. It’s not like Justin was applying to every scholarship under the sun.
Laen
Don’t forget if it is an athletic scholarship it can be taken away at will by the school and/or coach if they like another player better.
JoyfulA
Let’s stop with the concept of connecting parents’ ability to pay and the child’s ability to pay. I’ve known plenty of parents, of my generation and my parents’, including some quite well-to-do parents, who would not pay anything toward their 18-year-old’s education.
P. Diddy is probably a generous father—but we have no proof of that. He may be more like my coworker who said: My parents never gave me anything but room and board, and kids have to learn to stand on their own two feet. If my kids want to go to college, they’ll find a way. (After which the father was transferred out of state, and the kid couldn’t even both live at home to cut costs and qualify for in-state tuition rates.)
SatanicPanic
This is pretty lame though. Why is a guy who was given a Maybach for his sixteenth birthday bothering to apply for a scholarship? There’s only so much money sitting around for scholarships and it’s just tacky to go applying for one if you don’t need to.
But I agree if this were not a black man’s son (and a black rapper specifically) this would not even be news.
elm
@Aardvark Cheeselog: That’s not Combs’s fault. If you want to argue that all scholarships should be need-based, then that’s fine. In the meantime, there’s no suggestion that Combs broke UCLA’s rules or is ineligible for the scholarship.
lacp
No, this shouldn’t be a question. He sounds like a pretty impressive young man. Receiving a merit scholarship is not denying anything to anybody else. If his family wants to kick some money UCLA’s way, that’s fine, but that’s also irrelevant.
Of course, we could make tuition free at all state schools, but that would be SOCI-you know what-ALISM.
Ash Can
Count me among those who don’t think anything this son has earned on his own should be taken away from him. Also, keep in mind that merit-based scholarships aren’t just scholarships, they’re resume boosters. This is a good step for him in building up his own name separate from his father’s, and I don’t begrudge him a bit of it.
Trakker
Justin EARNED the scholarship. What is it that CNN doesn’t understand about the word? Have they also asked all the other rich people who EARNED their fortune to give it back? All I know is that the wealthy keep working hard to give even LESS of it back to the government to pay for the benefits they receive.
So, congrats to Justin, and good luck at UCLA. It would be nice if his family made a contribution to the school, but not now, not after seeing this on CNN.
Kent
The reason we don’t hear about this from most wealthy whites is that their kids mostly don’t go to state schools, they go to exclusive private schools like the ivys and ivy equivalents such as Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, etc.
I would lay 1000 to 1 odds that none of the Romney clan are going to U-Mass.
As for giving back a merit scholarship? For God’s sake. The kid earned it. This isn’t financial aid. There are dozens of offspring of NFL greats playing in college under full athletic scholarships right now. I’ve never heard this argument even come up before for any of them. Although the original article is a bit confusing. Not that it makes any difference but is the kid on an academic merit scholarship and going to walk-on and play football? Or is it really an athletic scholarship in disguise?
satby
I may be a bit naive, but I think the question would be asked of a Gates or Jolie-Pitts kid getting a scholarship too; this issue is how loaded the parent is and how the kid (probably) doesn’t need financial help with college. But I doubt that Justin applied for the scholarship and he earned it on his own. I’m with Barbara in that there’s a large policy issue here about what scholarships should be available and used for; I lean to need and merit based.
Jeff Spender
Well, since I’m a human I guess I should throw in my two-cents about the content of the post.
This is a merit-based scholarship, awarded to him because of his own achievements. If he is making accomplishments independent of his father that are worth rewarding, he should keep those rewards as they reflect on his character.
I won a merit-based full tuition scholarship from U of Michigan for my academic and extracurricular accomplishments. My parents didn’t pay a cent for my education because they couldn’t afford it (so I was thankful to have this or else I couldn’t afford to go). I do not begrudge the fact that Justin Combs won this scholarship based on his own accomplishments, despite the wealth of his father.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I think it’s because he’s one of those rich blah people. If he wasn’t one of those rich blah persons then nobody would have noticed.
He earned it, end of story. If his father wanted to donate the amount back then that’s his business. If I was in the same position I would do so because it would make his son’s accomplishment that much more because he gets to keep it and someone else will benefit from the donation. What a load of crock for this to even be brought up. Kudos to Justin Combs for his accomplishments.
This wouldn’t even be mentioned if his last name was Bieber.
Glix
Schools give out scholarships to attract students that will raise their athletic and/or academic averages. I don’t think his dad needs to donate any money to the school because they are already getting what they wanted.
John M
@SatanicPanic: I think you are imagining a process that doesn’t exist. He didn’t really “apply” for a scholarship. He was recruited by UCLA and other universities on the basis of his athletic ability and was offered scholarships by the football coaching staffs of UCLA and other universities. Obviously, an athlete must meet certain academic standards (and Combs sounds like he would be an attractive candidate at any major university’s football program with his high GPA), but he was offered this scholarship because he’s an elite football player. It isn’t as if he decided to attend UCLA and then crossed his fingers, hoping he would get some financial aid. Had UCLA not offered him a scholarship, he likely would have attended another school that did offer him a scholarship (Illinois, Virginia, and Wyoming among them, according to a recruiting website).
Count me among the others who think there is a racial element to this article, not so much exclusively based on skin color but based on the combination of skin color and the fact that Sean Combs made his fortune producing “that music.” While many elite college athletes come from modest-to-impoverished backgrounds, there also are plenty who are the children of doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, and, of course, multimillionaire professional athletes. I don’t recall anyone suggesting that, for instance, Luke Walton should have been on college scholarship, or Tim Hardaway, Jr., and so on.
Sloegin
Athletic Scholarship. Let’s say it again. Athletic Scholarship.
The school is basically ponying up a sweetener in an otherwise pay for play football-mill universe. The kid offers up his talents and time and the chance of career ending or life-long injuries…
And the school offers him something which isn’t even minimum wage in the deal.
Mr Stagger Lee
I would like to ask about all these schools with the mega billion dollar endowments, WTF are you saving the money for, especially when students go to your schools are bankrupted the minute they get undressed from the cap and gowns.
JGabriel
__
__
Zandar:
Yes, it would still an issue if it were Bill Gates’ son or Angela Jolie’s daughter, at least for me.
The issue isn’t race, but, as you stress, merit. Justin Combs started on third base; with wealth comes access to the best tutors and personal trainers.
That said, is CNN raising the question due to his race or merit? There, you’ve got me — I don’t know. Race admittedly complicates the question here.
Ultimately, though, I’m puzzled at to why Combs’ even applied for the scholarship, given the kind of wealth his father possesses. I think the reason you don’t see similar stories about the children of other very rich people winning such scholarships is because they so seldom apply for them.
Edited to Add:
Or, maybe I’m wrong:
John M:
Thanks for the clarification, John M. I didn’t see your comment before adding mine.
.
PurpleGirl
I don’t believe you apply for athletic scholarships directly. I think he should keep the scholarship.
Do we know if Justin Combs was raised by Sean Combs? I don’t remember seeing stories about him being a father and family man. Maybe this is a kid he fathered but wasn’t very involved with beyond giving him his name. Yes, the father should support his son but do we know anything about that support in the past?
I do think the same question would come up if a Gates kid won an athletic scholarship. UCLA isn’t supported by California in the way it used to be. Their budgets get cut every year, but this is a question of the athletic recruitment system, which is problematical anyway. In that light should they still support a athletic department? If so, then Justin Combs worked toward a goal and he still deserves the reward.
Jewish Steel
That’s the key point for me. It would be deeply unfair to rob that kid of something he’s earned.
jl
@SatanicPanic:
” But I agree if this were not a black man’s son (and a black rapper specifically) this would not even be news. ”
I think the question does not fit well with the Randoid line heard from some quarters of CNN that the super rich are the persecuted wealth producers who deserve more tax breaks.
So, I go with more ‘racism’ than ‘idiocracy’.
But, a person can try to test it. Can anyone find similar stories on white super rich families? If so, I will reconsider.
RossInDetroit
Because controversy, duh. This story isn’t about Athletics, scholarships, Rap, wealth or anything but CNN. They know they can whip up an argument for a news cycle or two so why not?
And look. It worked like a charm.
Jeff Spender
@JGabriel:
I sincerely doubt he applied for the scholarship. Usually, when a school hands out merit-based scholarships, they don’t require applications.
I didn’t have to apply for my scholarship, unless you count the admissions application. They rewarded to me based on my record, not on an application.
SatanicPanic
@John M: That’s all well and good, but I’m making a different point. At a time when our CA schools are raising tuition it just looks bad for everyone involved that someone who can obviously (hello! Maybach for his birthday!) afford it is getting a big scholarship.
Yes, he shouldn’t have to give the money back. Yes, it’s probably an issue because he’s black. Yes, it’s a great accomplishment and he should be proud. None of this negates a simple lesson my mother taught me- if you can afford to forgo a benefit that might go to someone needier, then you should.
ETA- fixed my spelling
Downpuppy
@satby: There is no question to be asked, other than maybe “Why is somebody who doesn’t need it subjecting himself to high risks of permanent pain & brain damage?”
When CNN has an excuse to talk about kids of megafamous people they will. No matter how lame an excuse, and this one is lamer than a 60 year old tight end with 9 knee surgeries, a hip replacement & CTE.
jp7505a
While I think he should keep the scholaship, maybe the debate as to the qualifications for the scholarship should be broadened to include all of the other super rick folks mentioned in this thread.
gene108
Plenty of kids of famous, successful and wealthy athletes go to college on athletic scholarships. The retired athlete/parents probably aren’t as rich as Sean “Puff Daddy” (P.Diddy’s for losers) Combs, but they all probably have a net worth north of seven figures.
Barry Larkin’s son, for example, is on a basketball scholarship for Miami (FL), Archie Manning’s spawn got free rides to college and when Eli was playing at Ole Miss, his older brother Peyton was already making millions in the NFL.
Should Sean Combs donate money to UCLA? Yes. Colleges and universities need all the help they can get, but Justin isn’t the first or going to be the last rich kid to earn an athletic scholarship.
EDIT: Also, too athletic scholarships are usually the reward for a high school kid signing an LOI, which are generally loaded in favor of the school. If kid’s signing a contract to play for UCLA, then UCLA has some duty to remunerate the kid for the commitment.
butler
This is shitty journalism by CNN.
It appears that this is an athletic scholarship, in which case it was offered by the football team and he didn’t “apply” for it in the traditional sense. If it wasn’t going to him, it would be going to some other potential athlete like him, so this isn’t taking money out of the general scholarship fund. There are also NCAA rules about scholarship offers, financial aid and eligibility which make it harder for him to bypass the scholarship offer. Not impossible, but its not as easy as simply turning it down.
The $54000 number comes from the fact that he’s technically an out of state admit and thus would have been charged an additional $22000 a year in out of state tuition if he was a regular student, but I seriously doubt he would be heading all the way to UCLA from New York if it weren’t for the athletic angle. He would have had many, many other colleges to pick from, but he wants to play football and UCLA looks like his best fit for that.
The Red Pen
We really don’t have enough information to comment on this.
I think that there is an intuitive understand that meeting the criteria for this scholarship is waaaaay easier if you have the support of a multi-millionaire family.
I also harbor the entirely baseless suspicion that there were other valid candidate who came from more modest backgrounds, but who knows?
That said, some scholarships are deliberately “need blind,” and if they go to a kid who doesn’t need the money, so be it. Maybe this is one of those.
SteveM
Diddy is a rich guy. He’s not one of the rich guys who’s actively fighting a class war against the non-rich (although people he socializes with are among the class-war warlords). His son is getting money when the non-rich are struggling as a result of that class war. I do have a problem with that.
And I would feel exactly the same way if it were the rich child of one of my people.
Jeff Spender
@SatanicPanic:
The issue I take with this is that schools set aside money for merit-based scholarships and need-based scholarships. Just become a person comes from a wealthy background doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be rewarded.
Scholarships are an excellent signal to a potential employer that this person is reliable and dedicated, especially if it is merit-based. The school is giving him money to attend (and I don’t want to get into a discussion about athletic scholarships and college athletics–that’s not the issue here), which means that they’re investing in him.
That says a lot about the person. As for the budget issues in California–the only thing I can say after paying attention to their issues with budgets and taxation is that they’re short-sighted buffoons.
John M
@JGabriel: Sorry, but I don’t think you can personal train your way into being an upper Division I college athlete. Of course, training and tutoring can and do make a difference, and plenty of kids with D-I talent squander it, but consider the huge number of kids who play high school football, nearly all of whom would love to play college football. At the roughly 65 major conference programs, there are a grand total of about 1500 scholarship slots in a given year. This kid is comfortably within the 99th percentile in athletic ability if he is getting this sort of interest.
While universities resist the comparison, it’s probably best to think of it as an employment relationship. UCLA hired Justin Combs to play for its football team because he is an elite athlete and a good-enough student (more than good enough in this case, but it doesn’t really matter), and compensates him by paying for his tuition and living expenses. Given the way college athletics actually works, I don’t see why he should be treated any differently. Even if Combs were willing to play as a walk-on at UCLA or somewhere else, it’s not as if there is a guarantee that the money would go to a kid who needs it. Perhaps it would go to the lawyer’s kid who fits UCLA’s need at linebacker.
What if Combs were a law school grad hired by a large firm? Should he be paid a lower salary than a kid who was a first generation college grad and who borrowed to the hilt? I don’t think so.
boatboy_srq
Shorter version of this: IOKIYW. It’s the converse of the “ni-CLANG driving a nice car got what he deserved” meme after Ennis Cosby. CNN’s story is right up there with the “news” about steak-eating young bucks going home to Cadillac-driving Momma and collecting Welfare and Food Stamps.
And there’s plenty of 1%ers that are getting National Merit and other scholarships, who are taught from middle school how to find, apply and obtain those scholarships, so the Ivy-vs-State dichotomy doesn’t hold up all too well, either: only the $$s are different. The Romneys may not be going to U-Mass, but you can bet that wherever they ARE going, they aren’t paying full tuition, either.
I’m with Trakker: it’d be cool if P Diddy donated some decent sum to the school (even if it comes with the price tag of “Puff Daddy School of Music” or the like). OTOH, we’ve pushed IGMFY for so long, if he doesn’t “pay it forward,” we have no one to blame but ourselves; and especially in the music biz, where the performers are FUBARd until they go multiplatinum, there’s very little we can say about a performer making it big except that s/he’s smarter than his/her producers and agents.
The Dangerman
It’s not racial as much as catching eyeballs; it’s the same thing as American Idol making a big deal about Jim Carrey’s daughter making the first cut this year. Did she make the first cut because she’s the daughter of someone famous? Maybe yes, maybe no. Did she get on TV because she’s the daughter of someone famous? Are you kidding me?
LAC
CNN should go fuck themselves and mind their business. Maybe spend more time focusing on how Romney is going to create 500,000 jobs out of thin air. Oh, wait, that would be journalism and not a bunch of doughy political operatives sitting around offering their jaded takes on things. Too much work…
Zach
There are many children of the rich and famous pulling down stipends in PhD programs. No different.
lacp
@SteveM: His son is getting money because he’s an athlete the school wants. If they thought they could recruit a better football player elsewhere, the scholarship would have gone to that person. Financial need doesn’t enter this at all.
There might be an argument lurking around that athletic scholarships suck, and that the hype about them being some sort of gateway for low-income (especially minority) young people who otherwise couldn’t afford college is bullshit. But that’s not what CNN is peddling and I don’t think it’s really what Zandar was talking about, either.
Cacti
@JGabriel:
That’s my beef with merit scholarships in general. I would guess that a fair number of them get gobbled up by children from a privileged background. Not because they didn’t do the work, or earn the grades, but rather, because they had every possible resource to help them succeed including: first rate schools, the best and most up to date curriculum, tutors and aides, and supportive parents who value educational achievement.
To have a true meritocracy, a level playing field is required.
g
Sure, the kid earned it, that’s fine. But my question is – why did the one of the richest men in the country let his son apply for a scholarship? Why didn’t Sean Combs sit Justin down and tell him that maybe he should let other kids have that opportunity?
Oh, and I’d be happy to supply Mr. Combs with the contact info for the UCLA School of Music – they could certainly use some scholarships for music students, or even an endowed chair – or perhaps some funding for the capital campaign.
gussie
Are you saying that if Romney’s kid took a $54,000 scholarship, we wouldn’t be snarking about it? I sure as hell would.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i could make a case that justin combs deserves the scholley just based on the things he can’t do that he might do if he weren’t a student athlete and related to a big time mogul. see, also, rohan marley, son of bob. there were some ticky tack violations of ncaa rules because rohan invited friends and teammates to hang out at the marley home in jamaica if memory serves…
so if you want to be a puritan about it, combs needs to not only pay the cost of the scholarship, but also pay for the extra work the compliance office will have to do making sure no swag gets passed amongst college students.
the ncaa will starfuck the shit out of this, because they can seem like hardasses for free, while letting all kinds of shit they should be looking at, blow by them. its a feature not a bug.
SatanicPanic
@Jeff Spender: You’re still missing my point. He could say “great, I am glad to accept this, but I’m going to donate this to —- for students from poor families,” like when he donated the $10K his dad gave him for his birthday to Haiti. That would be a nice thing to do. Is this so much to ask from our wealthy?
Come on, that’s not what’s going to get him a job. It’s more like this-
My dad is P-Diddy. I went to school of my dad is P-Diddy. Aren’t you friends with P-Diddy? Because he’s my dad.
John M
@SatanicPanic: I certainly understand that there is plenty of debate about the role of athletic departments at the UC schools and many other public and private universities. But I don’t think it makes much sense to think of Combs’s scholarship as coming out of a common pot. Suppose that Combs told UCLA, “hey, coach, thanks for the offer, but I’m going to walk on and my dad is going to pay the bill, so give my scholarship to someone else.” That scholarship then would go back in the football coach’s pocket, and he would use the scholarship to benefit the football team. Sure, given that Sean Combs’s net worth is about $500 million, then anyone who gets the scholarship will need it more. But it isn’t as if the UCLA coach is going to seek out someone who really needs it. Sure, perhaps he will give a to a kid from East LA whose parents work low wage jobs and who would have had no prayer of going to UCLA otherwise. Or, perhaps he will give to to a plastic surgeon’s kid from Beverly Hills who is fortunate enough to be rich without being famous.
Also, keep in mind that athletic departments generate a bunch of revenue through merchandising, TV rights, ticket sales, alumni donations, etc. It’s far from assured that even if UCLA abololished its major athletic department that the money that is going to Combs would be there otherwise.
g
@Barbara: Barbara, believe it or not, UCLA is not “a heavily state financed endeavor.” As for many so-called “public” universities, the state’s contribution to the university’s budget is a mere fraction of the total budget – perhaps as little as 13%.
lacp
@SatanicPanic: Doubt if that will pull much weight if he’s looking for a job as an architect or a biochemist.
yopd1
Combs already gives a lot to education and student scholarships. In 1999, he gave Howard University
So I don’t think anyone can claim that he doesn’t support education. Besides that, Justin Combs is not his father. He earned it, he should take it.
Zach
@Cacti: “To have a true meritocracy, a level playing field is required.”
College is way too late to level the playing field. A few decades of increasing local control of school funding has poisoned the public education system–it’s really amazing that there’s no widespread movement for statewide or national education funding. Local funding has fueled de facto segregation and real-estate bubbles and contributed to the decay of rural America in addition to incredible educational inequities. It’s also an idiotically inefficient way to allocate public funds.
It seems like you could make a very effective, simple campaign for increased national and statewide education funding based around examples of supposedly public schools separated by tiny distances that aren’t remotely equivalent.
Keith
I just generally don’t like the wording “should [he] give back the money?” UCLA didn’t cut him a check for $55k; they gave him a scholarship, which is essentially waving fees, so it’s not like he’s in a position to be “returning money”
Silver
A retarded white guy got installed as President of the United States because of his Daddy.
99% of the same people who will bitch about this don’t give a fuck about that. I wonder why?
Cacti
@lacp:
Right.
It’s not like his Dad, the CEO of a major entertainment company, might ever want to design and build new recording facilities or something of the like.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Because he’s black, and so obviously has been pilfering from the pool of White People Taxpayer Money in one way or another, and should have the decency to pay it back rather than take, as the racists say, the “gibs me dat”.
FUCKING SICKENING.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Because he’s black, and so obviously has been pilfering from the pool of White People Taxpayer Money in one way or another, and should have the decency to pay it back rather than take, as the racists say, the “gibs me dat”.
FUCKING SICKENING. I wish they’d get back to the dogwhistles instead of the full-bore yelling.
catclub
@PIGL: Can you name two not named Buffett?
@Barbara: This.
pseudonymous in nc
I’m going to wind this back a little, and ask whether what’s warped here is the prevailing narrative of the athletic scholarship, particularly when the recipients are young African-American men.
MikeJ
The kid is doing a job and getting paid for it. He’ll play football and get a UCLA education in return.
Are there any other jobs for which it should be illegal to hire the children of rich people?
kdaug
3.75
Kid wasn’t slouching.
Emma
@SatanicPanic: You know, no offense. But you don’t have any personal knowledge of this kid’s character. You have NO EARTHLY idea how he would behave in any circumstances, yet you assume that he’s going to use his father’s name to get a job.
How is this different from assuming that a black kid from the projects will become a criminal because he’s a black kid from the projects?
StevenDS
I’m not sure if this was pointed out in the thread, but athletic scholarships aren’t paid with taxpayer money. They are paid with revenue generated by the athletic department.
JGabriel
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John M:
Those are exactly who I am considering. Are you telling me it’s a coincidence that out of all those kids, UCLA’s choice for the best applicant also comes from a fabulously wealthy family that can afford advantages 99.99% of those kids can’t?
John M:
Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I think a public, taxpayer-funded, educational institution should be in the business of leveling the playing field for the bottom 95% rather than further entrenching the advantages of the financial elite.
UCLA isn’t a law firm, or a professional football team for that matter — it’s a school, a state school. It’s purpose is education for the benefit of individuals and society, not winning legal cases or athletic competitions.
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Cacti
@Silver:
The last three dullards put up by the GOP have been the sons of elite political/business/military families.
Bush 43 – son of former POTUS, VPOTUS; grandson of former US Senator
McCain – son and grandson of US Navy Admirals
Romney – son of American Motors CEO and former governor of Michigan
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were self-made success stories in every sense of the word, and the Republicans despise them.
Meritocracy my ass.
SatanicPanic
@lacp: vs having got a football scholarship?
thm
What is irksome about this situation is that this type of opportunity–a merit-based scholarship for a highly skilled student to hone and further develop his skills with some of the best teachers (in this case, coaches) in the land–exists only for athletics. UCLA will not be giving any similarly generous merit-based scholarships to students who are equivalent stand-outs in poetry or math or violin, if they can’t show evidence of need.
There are some striving second-tier colleges and universities that try to raise their profile by offering purely merit-based scholarships on the basis of academic excellence, but these are often criticized for taking money away from needy students: I hope everyone who points out that Justin EARNED his MERIT scholarship is also defending these programs.
Football at UCLA is actually a profitable enterprise and so one could argue that this scholarship (and coach salaries that are several times that of faculty salaries) are a completely justifiable business decision: pay what they need to get the people they need to keep the program successful. The presence of top talent like Justin Coombs keeps the TV contracts and booster donations coming in, and even after the seemingly outrageous expenses, the program gives millions back to the school, which likely subsidizes the less popular sports. (Incidentally, women’s basketball is one of the largest users of such subsidies.)
But sports are a zero-sum game; each time there’s a winner there’s also a loser. (Actually, it’s worse than zero-sum: only one national champion and (presently) 124 non-champions.) A program’s profit depends upon its success; less than half of the programs are be profitable. So there is a sense in which the football and financial success of UCLA depends on the existence of losing teams, whose expenses are not that much smaller than UCLAs but whose revenue is far shorter. To make up the gap, these losing schools get if from tuition or student fees. So taking the college athletics system as a whole, there is an indirect subsidy from needy students at football-losing schools to wealthy student-athletes are football-winning schools.
But we can’t exactly ask the Coombs family to solve such an entangled problem on its own.
swearyanthony
Surely if he wanted to go to college he should have gotten in because of his dad, just like the numerous Kennedys, Bushes and the Romneys – Tagg, Todd, Postit-Note and the other one. Earning your way into college? That’s frankly unamerican. What is this, France?
Fuck this story. It’s not even dog-whistling. It’s a racism vuvuzela.
Jennifer
While it would be a nice gesture if Sean Combs gave some money to UCLA, I think that’s even a bit presumptious to assume that he should. My guess is that he probably will, either now or in the future, because that’s the kind of thing wealthy parents routinely do for the schools their kids attend/attended.
The school was going to spend the money on a scholarship for someone, period. The fact that the scholarship was won on a merit basis by the kid of a wealthy person makes no difference to the school’s bottom line; they were going to award $55,000 in scholarship assistance to either Justin Combs or someone else. The school decided that they wanted Justin Combs’ talents rather than someone else’s; there’s no obligation inferred for the scholarship recipient or any of his relations.
SatanicPanic
@Emma: I’m not stereotyping him based on his race, I’m stereotyping him based on his being having a father in the 1%. If stereotyping the wealthy is a wrong I don’t want to be right.
swearyanthony
@gussie: Nah, because we wouldn’t hear about it. It’d be some quiet little “JP Morgan Award for Outstanding Genes” or some such.
Barbara
@g: The state is still the single largest source of funds for the UC system. Moreover, funding cuts would suggest that money should be distributed more, not less, on the basis of need. But please, don’t see this as an issue about Justin Combs: he’s just a kid who is playing by the rules as written. The larger issue is what the rules should be, how athletics should be included in collegiate life, and balancing concepts of need and merit. On that issue, my idea of what ought to happen would probably not result in him getting a merit based scholarship that (most likely) was as much a function of athletic as academic ability, though he clearly demonstrates both.
maye
That’s debatable. If a kid gets paid to go there to play football, and the school makes money off it’s football team, what is the definition of “professional.”
I cringed at this story (rich kid gets $ for college), because I woke up to this story on the front page of the L.A. Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-college-summer-20120527,0,5544208.story
I know it’s based on merit, and the kid deserves it. Can’t argue with that.
boatboy_srq
The Reichwing, hearing this, would whinge all the louder that Combs should hand that money back – ‘cuz it’s “private-sector, free-enterprise” funds and all that.
Your point is also a very good launching pad for a discussion of why our undergrad system is so effed up, and how a profitable athletic department doesn’t necessarily serve the needs of the institution as a whole.
JGabriel
@Zach:
Right. Tell that to everyone who benefited from the college grants in the post-WW II G.I. Bill, which, among other factors, helped create a larger, more equal, middle class for the period 1945-1980 — until Modern Conservatism, starting with Reagan, led to the dismantling of the programs, regulations, and tax infrastructure that supported growing and maintaining that middle class.
The G.I. Bill’s educational provisions were crucial for leveling the playing field in the aftermath of WW II.
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SiubhanDuinne
Classic CNN. And yeah, why are they “covering” this “story” in the first place?
Nutella
@Jeff Spender:
But why should rich and meritorious people be rewarded with money? Wouldn’t it be better if they were rewarded with glory so there’s more money available to reward the poor and meritorious who actually need the money?
(And yeah, CNN is on this because hating on black rappers sells ads. I’m on this because I have never approved of scholarships for rich students of any color.)
swearyanthony
@SiubhanDuinne: Some say CNN is populated by a pack of upper-class racist douchebags, while other people think they are merely clueless. A further group think instead they are just scumbags desperately for clicks and links from HuffPo and Drudge. Who are we to say? Please visit our website, vote in the poll and add comments. Visit often!
JustMe
I think it is kind of sleazy for people to whom $54K is chump change to be applying for scholarships at all.
UCLA wants to incentivize him to go to UCLA instead of someplace else.
If you are of above average intelligence, a million-dollar donation from a parent can be what it takes to get you into a prestigious school. How would we feel if, instead, Combs when to Harvard courtesy of his father’s money?
28 Percent
I’m kind of disappointed in all the declarations that the son “earned this on his own”. It’s great that he plays football and keeps a 3.75 average, but there are plenty of other kids out there who have the potential to do the same, but don’t have the stable home life that allows them to reach that potential.
I mean, awesome, a teenager who has grown up in a nurturing environment has shown that the nurturing pays off. That’s not quite anything remotely like pulling himself up by the bootstraps. It’s not like we’re talking about “Blind Side” here.
rlrr
@JustMe:
You don’t even have to be above average intelligence if the donation is big enough and you have Walker and Bush in your name…
catclub
@JGabriel: “The G.I. Bill’s educational provisions were crucial for leveling the playing field in the aftermath of WW II.”
And the more time passes, the more I am convinced that it was a huge anomaly in how we (mis)treat veterans.
kd bart
NBC News should create reporting jobs for those who are not connected like Luke Russert and Chelsea Clinton.
John M
@JGabriel: Yeah, I think it is a bit of a coincidence. Generally, scholarship offers of this sort are made by the head coach. UCLA’s head coach (now the younger Jim Mora, the son of another famous coach of the same name) doesn’t seem to have any particular incentive to offer a scholarship to a player who isn’t good enough to contribute. I don’t mean to be an apologist for college athletics, which has some major problems, but is there any evidence that athletic scholarships skew toward the affluent? At least in football and men’s basketball, I would guess that the opposite is true.
catclub
@boatboy_srq: “They are paid with revenue generated by the athletic department.”
Also, all this revenue never seems to make it back to the rest of the institution.
My strongest memory, as a grad student pretty unconnected to college life, was when ‘student activity funds’ were used to re-sod the football stadium field. Not that any non-football playing students got to use said field.
gnomedad
I’ll tell you this: if a prominent rich white conservative insisted that his son pay his own way through college to learn self-reliance and said son got a scholarship it would be bring-a-tear-to-your-eye awesome.
/ snark – just in case it’s not clear.
Jeff Spender
@Nutella:
Define glory. What reward could they get that would have equal standing to a scholarship of some sort? Some shitty medal or certificate saying, “YAY! YOU DONE GOOD, KID.”
More to the point, why should the children of wealthy people be treated differently because their parents are wealthy? I know plenty of children who had rich parents that didn’t cover the cost of their education (they had to budget down to the last cent and find ways to pay–all part of the education process, their parents claimed).
Alex
Don’t you remember the hue and cry when Phil Simms’ kid took an athletic scholarship to play at University of Texas?
Me neither.
Ben Cisco
Fuck TeaNN. That is all.
Linda Featheringill
The younger Mr. Combs is not an appendage to his dad and not a side growth, like a tumor or something. He is a separate individual and needs to have his own life, some of which is separated from dad.
I think it’s excellent that he earned a scholarship. It is his and he should keep it. And he should use that scholarship to help him prepare to become whatever he wants to be, even if that turns out to be different from his dad.
He did well and should ignore those dummies at CNN. Congrats.
[Apparently Mom and Dad did a good job, too.]
Jeff Spender
@28 Percent:
My dad was an abusive alcoholic who, when he wasn’t passed out drunk, was taking out his frustration on my brother and I. It was a horrible, horrible time.
Yet I persevered. I didn’t let my shitty home life serve as an excuse, and I certainly didn’t follow my dad’s example of being a washed-out drunk who couldn’t manage to stay out of prison.
I don’t buy your line of reasoning. Never have. They can make it happen if they want it.
IrishGirl
@JoyfulA: Indeed, my father who was solidly middle class told me at 13 years old he would not pay for my education and he would not co-sign loans for me. As a result, I was working about 30 hours a week by the time I was 14.
StevenDS
People, the only thing that UCLA, the academic institution, had to do with the scholarship awarded to Justin Combs was
1) Hiring the athletic director who hired the coach who determined that Justin Combs was of sufficient skill and character to deserve an offer of an athletic scholarship.
2) Setting the minimum academic criteria for football recruits, which Mr. Combs passed easily.
Again, the scholarship is paid to the University by athletic department revenue. Revenue is greatly increased by putting a winning team on the field. Justin Combs, by being on the team and generating that revenue deserves his scholarship.
You can complain about UCLA’s coach having a bad eye for athletic talent, or about our whole system of NCAA athletics in general.
But to digress on whether “merit-based scholarships” taken by the children of media moguls are fair, or whether it was appropriate for Mr. Combs to “apply” for this scholarship, or whether he or his father should decline the free tuition/room/board, is a bunch of nonsense.
Villago Delenda Est
His father is blah.
End of discussion.
Let’s instead terminate ALL legacy admissions and hires. Every last one. Then we can talk about returning a scholarship issued on merit because dad has some bucks.
Jay in Oregon
@Randy P:
In the real world, no.
In Right-Wing Echo Chamber, one of the qualifications of “merit” is how little melatonin your skin has. Everyone Knows(tm) that those of a duskier hue never earn anything but they are given handouts by the LIEberals to keep them on the plantation (NOT THAT I’M BEING RACIST!).
I think that covers it…
Provider_UNE
@elm:
Be completely cynical. The “problem” in this case is that he’s blackety-blackety-black and his father earned his money making blackety-blackety-black music.
Plus a not incosiderable amount of his earnings came out of the pocket of white kids, quite possibly the majority of Puffy’s earnings. Which means he should give some of it back. This piece is clearly about a racial subtext, And I have not ever heard this question asked about any kid who won a scholarship before.
I’ll leave it at that as we seemed to be a 14 comments when i decided to dive in and now that I see that there are many times that number, i am sure wherever else I was going to go has been addressed already.
The whole premise is patent bullshit.
A more important question might run along the lines of: how the fuck does Luke Russert manage to keep getting paid?
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SatanicPanic
@JoyfulA:
This is hiding in plain sight on Diddy’s wikipedia page-
I only mentioned this twice already on this thread. I’m not going to pretend that Diddy doesn’t have any personal reason to promote his image by doing this kind of thing, but let’s say this was the only thing Diddy ever gave him. If he had to sell his Maybach to pay for college, would anyone in their right mind feel bad for him? What if his dad gave him a big pile of stock and he had to sell some of that to pay for college? Oh wait
Howlin Wolfe
@Gin & Tonic: Win! Dingdingdingding!!
burnspbesq
@boatboy_srq:
It’s a little late to be making that argument. There is far too much evidence of a strong, positive, and statistically significant correlation between athletic success (especially football success) and alumni giving. That’s true at every level of sports, from FBS to D3, and at both public and private schools. Even Duke, for all its success in basketball, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, and golf, is working desperately to improve its football team for precisely this reason.
You can argue that it shouldn’t be that way, but you can’t argue that it isn’t that way.
FlipYrWhig
Yeah, as others have said, there’s no “applying” for athletic scholarships. And IIRC athletes on scholarship have a different set of obligations, perks, and protections than athletes who just try out, so-called “walk-ons.”. You might have an incentive to be a “scholarship athlete” beyond the financial reward it conveys.
BigSouthern
@PurpleGirl: For all of Puffy’s faults, he appears to be a devoted father (husband, not so much) who is active in the lives of his children. He even took care of Al B Sure’s kid when he got serious with the mother, and not just like, “Hey you’re in my house, I guess you can have some cereal,” but like, “Hey, I’m going to treat you like one of my own.”
To respond to the general post, I do think this if this was another entertainer’s kid we’d hear about this, but not with all the question marks attached. If this was a politician’s or business mogul’s kid then absolutely not. I am sympathetic to the viewpoint that he earned this scholarship and should feel no shame for keeping it, but I think it would be a classy move for Puffy to donate to the university. In fact, given who Puffy is, I don’t doubt that’s exactly what he’ll do.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@elm:
Yes, I think this is right. My guess is that if his father had been running some big company or something, nobody would be whining about this. Though, if pressed, I don’t doubt that Republicans would throw in some snide aside about affirmative action or some such bullshit.
At heart, though–and I know this isn’t the thing at the fore here, but it still has something to do with it–is that rap is blackety-blackety-black music–or “music” if you like. Anything black Americans do, anything, is always some kind of twisted, illegitimate perversion of “real” whatever-we-happen-to-be-talking-about. Rap isn’t “real” music. It’s black music; real music is what white people write. Rap is violent and sexist and all kinds of shit that Republicans never care about unless they think black people are doing it (since when have sexism or violence pissed off Republicans as a rule?).
Nothing that black people do–nothing–stands or falls on its own merits. It only exists to be compared to the white version of whatever it is, and people will always find a reason to say that it isn’t as good. Nothing black people do exists for its own sake, but only to be looked at as some kind of mutant form of the white gold standard. (This also holds for women, by the way.)
Anything that isn’t white and male is seen as some kind of abberation. White men are the standard; we’re “real”; we’re what everybody stacks up against. Everybody else gets held up against white men, and they always come away lacking.
JGabriel
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m perfectly fine with that. Also, let’s add a provision that all internships must pay enough for a student to cover expenses and set aside some amount for the following year’s tuition — as it stands, the internship system perpetuates class divisions by providing networking and resume-building experience largely to those who can afford to work for free or minimal amounts.
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4tehlulz
I think we’re missing the real issue – can Justin Combs produce a birth certificate proving he was born in America?
Why won’t the liberal media investigate what really needs to be investigated?
Villago Delenda Est
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Well, um…never.
For example, they were all for violence in a certain middle eastern country that had done absolutely nothing to us last decade.
boatboy_srq
@catclub: Thanks, but credit where it’s due – you’re actuallyquoting StevenDS @ #73.
Keith G
Is there a more specific point that you are itching to type?
Anyway, that proposed event is bull shit. I imagine a whole list of non “hip-hop media mogul”s for whom this would be an issue. Trump, Kerry, any Kennedy, the emerging Pitt clan or for many other celeb families this would be a big fucking deal. And yes, some of the above do not have young children anymore, but if they did have a story like this, the clamor would be obnoxious.
Your choices as a front pager baffle me.
kc
@SatanicPanic:
I don’t think it’s just because Sean Combs is blah, it’s because he’s known for his extravagant spending and conspicuous consumption.
I bet our media would be talking about it if it were, I dunno, Kim Kardashian’s kid (not that she has one, but you know what I mean).
They let Luke Russert off the hook for his unearned broadcasting gig, though. Not because Luke is not-blah, because, hey, that’s too close to home.
Jeff Spender
@JGabriel:
THIS. THIS TIMES A BILLION.
This is why I took several low-paying summer jobs instead of internships. I couldn’t work for free. I didn’t have any other source of income.
It’s a largely unfair system. Needless to say, it hurt my job prospects when I graduated.
No relevant experience in the field? Why didn’t you take an internship?
Fuck you.
thm
@burnspbesq: I certainly believe that there’s a
and that from the perspective of an individual institution, pursuing a successful football program can make financial sense. But football is a zero-sum game, or worse (one champion, many non-champtions) so from a systematic perspective at least half will fail. It’s almost like the universities themselves are acting the role of the young athlete (or musician) who’s counting on his ability to make it big.
gvg
OK I’m skipping a lot of the posts of other people to reply but as a Financial Aid Counselor at a major University for 17 years I have to tell you that YES any rich kid of any color might be challenged for earning a merit based scholarship. It’s happening all the time. Of course its also semi random and many rich kids Don’t get questioned too. that is not to rule out that some people getting “upset” about this aren’t also racists but…
the problem comes from competing ideas that the population have about how all aid should be awarded and that the result is in my observation a pendulum swings back and forth and it’s treated as a zero sum game. If my preferred deserving student is getting aid, yours isn’t. Some people thing aid should be based on academic merit. some people think it should be need.
I’ve seen both awarding schemes on top and their are good and bad about both. If its all merit well, the rich can send their kids to better schools, get tutors, usually they set better examples because they went to college already and without thinking about it are better role models than non college parents. You get a school with a bunch of never tested elite who often don’t even know they are sheltered. If you only give need based aid you get a more diverse student body but you also build up a subset within the body who aren’t that used to being expected to produce and your school can’t build up a more elite reputation which enhances everybodies future prospects. IMO the best of both worlds is obtained by having both sets of funding. A really special needy student can double dip which since none of the funds are by themselves all that is needed, helps. I DO NOT think it works to try to come up with any kind of hybrid where both need and merit are in the same fund requirements and that is all there is. I think these things are kind of goldburg creations which don’t do either thing well.
Here in Florida we had for many years Lottery money which long ago used to fund both merit (Florida Academic scholarships) and need lottery grants. Then we had a state scandal where we discovered some pols here had redirected the education fund lottery money into roads just as the Georgia Hope scholarship was getting favorable national attention so we lock boxed the lottery money all towards Florida Academic scholarships with none for the need based grants (or the elementry/middle and high schools that used to get a share too). So for years now most of the money has been going to students of parents who are mostly pretty well off. surprise, there has been resentment. Now the Academic scholarship ap requires financial parent info. Just the info, nobody is being denied yet, but that is the way its headed. It’s being done while we have some of the biggest fools I’ve ever seen in office so I expect the results to be pretty silly. They need to divide up the money. both goals are important. why is that so hard to understand?
Background-in the years since we have as a school pushed higher academic standards and got our kids to get more scholarships-the reputation of the school has gone up, ditto job prospects and the quality of the students is better. On the other hand need based aid has been getting harder for other students to find and they need it.
As for paying your own way, it’s harder now than it was in my parents time. Most schools including public ones are just so much more exspensive compared to jobs available to not yet college degree students. Minimum wage used to buy more. Our school tuition is still relatively affordable compared to the rest of the country. In most of the country tuition has been out of sight for a long time.
JGabriel
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burnspbesq:
Of course. Why everyone knows that if you want to know which schools graduate the most Nobel Prize winners, the most successful scientists, historians, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, etc, you just need to look at which schools have the most profitable athletic departments.
I bet this year’s Ivy League grads are just kicking themselves for not going to Alabama or Penn State instead.
Perhaps it’s quaint, but I really think that educational institutions as a whole are intended to best serve educational goals, not field goals.
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Kilkee
My impression based on experiences with several kids recently moving through colleges is that with the exception of athletic scholarships, there are almost no “merit based” scholarships (i.e., academic-based) that are not tied to the family income. There may be the odd “scholarship for left-handed descendents of Roger Williams,” but for the most part colleges hand out their own money only to those who have proven need. I agree that Justin earned his athletic ‘scholarship’ and should keep it, but I think it might be a different issue if the money came from funds the school holds as true “scholarships” as opposed to money it can justify spending because of the cash cow that is modern big-time football.
Dr. Squid
Yeah, some say. If they can’t go on the record, I really don’t care what they have to say.
Some say. WTF is that supposed to be code for, anyway? Some mealymouthed journalist’s own opinion?
kc
@PurpleGirl:
Yeah. Google, anyone?
http://tinyurl.com/7cuecoj
aa
@burnspbesq: actually it isn’t that way. There is too much evidence to the contrary (especially for football failure after large investments).
You can argue it should be that way, but you can’t argue iti is that way.
Returning to the topic: I’d say the story is soft-core racism, which makes the class envy palatable. I assume they do sex and kittens as well (separately).
28 Percent
@Jeff Spender: I’m really sorry to hear that you had to go through that. I’m even sorrier that it sounds like you haven’t reached the stage of recovery where you recognize that childhood trauma is damaging and, more to the point, that it isn’t normal. I understand that it can be difficult from your vantage point to recognize the difference between acknowledging the effects of abuse, or the benefits of being well cared for, and “making excuses”, but that doesn’t make it any less true that when parents do their jobs right, their children are more likely to thrive. That is, after all, the whole point of parenting. Being raised by wolves might be survivable (although it isn’t always) but it certainly isn’t optimal.
P.S. – Al-Anon can do wonders.
cat
@Jeff Spender: I’m the only sibling out of three who made it out of my families destructive cycle. My sister drank herself to death at 34, my brother’s an un-recovered addict whose done time. Your nonsense reasoning that they ended up messed up and unable to function is because they didn’t clap hard enough is just plain wrong. Its luck or whatever you want to call it. My innate awesomeness had very little to do with it.
You keep mentioning these ‘rich peoples kids I know’ who didn’t get any money for their college education. This allows you conveniently over look the k-12 educations which will have been much better then poor peoples educations and the fact they are such the rare event basing education policy on them is misguided.
gelfling545
The young man applied for and received a scholarship that was merit based with no income restrictions. He earned it, he should keep it. How do we know that those who got the same scholarship in the past did not have an income equal to or greater than that of Mr. Combs the elder? I would bet the mortgage money that Mr. Combs makes substantial donations to various charities but I really don’t see what that has to do with his son receiving this honor. I don’t think I have ever heard anyone suggest before that anyone should be excluded from merit based scholarships because of parental income. It would really defeat the purpose of the award which appears to be to honor achievement.
Alex
@Linda Featheringill:
USC offered Combs’ untalented older kid a scholarship to entice his AAU team mate and buddy, DeMar Rozen, to accept a scholarship.
Now that is wrong, but for different reasons.
Sad_Dem
It isn’t just the blackety-black music, it’s the money for nothing and the chicks for free. Being an entertainer–that ain’t working. Just ask Sarah Palin.
Mike Lamb
There’s a lot of people making pretty definitive comments on this situation that really don’t understand how athletic scholarships are awarded and the difference between being a scholarship and non-scholarship athlete.
gogol's wife
@PIGL:
My ex-husband had a student who belonged to a very rich family. You would definitely recognize the name, it’s in the history books. The student came over one day to ask about opportunities for financial support for studying in Germany. I was a little shocked, but my ex-husband explained that the student said his family insisted he pay his own way and find his own opportunities. I think it’s a good model for raising your children, but one does wonder who else might have gotten that grant whose family could not have afforded to pay for it. It’s not an easy moral question at all.
Provider_UNE
@SatanicPanic:
SP, I have to wonder what the fuck a birthday present has to do with anything, though one might argue that there seems to be a bit of jealousy in your continuing to point out the type and expense of the Birthday gift in question.
The kid earned and was awarded a football scholorship, he took it, end of story.
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handy
@Mike Lamb:
Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened around here.
Tripod
An FBS program is allowed 85 full rides. Which is pretty much the entire roster. This is what causes the Title IX headaches.
Anyway, top tier gridiron and basketball players DON’T have alternative paths for professional development. It’s the NCAA or the highway. This contrasts with minor leagues that are provided for in baseball, soccer and hockey. Whatever the intent, the demographics of the respective player pools and league structures somehow ends up allowing black athletes little or no agency. Strange fruit indeed.
Ben Cisco
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Yup, pretty much this x infinity.
Felanius Kootea
$54,000 for the privilege of sustaining the type of concussion that can end your career and life early. (Wasn’t it recently that we were talking about football player suicides post-injury?)
Given the examples cited in this thread of (mostly white) NFL players’ kids who won athletic scholarships to state schools without a word of complaint from CNN, I’d say something smells funny about CNN’s coverage of this issue.
Martin
BTW, 3.75 is a pretty marginal GPA for UCLA. Their mean GPA for Fall 2012 is probably around a 4.05 and I bet there’s very few 3.75s or below there. The UCs are seriously hard to get into now.
But the kid shouldn’t give back the scholarship. He earned it. But dad earned a lot and should cut a large (endowment sized) check to the university for need-based scholarships. That’d be the proper balance here.
SteveM
@lacp: In other words, he’s an employee — oh, except that that’s against the rules in college sports.
And that takes us to a completely separate hobbyhorse of mine, which is that the entire big-time college sports structure should be destroyed, razed to the ground, and then the ground should be salted so that nothing similar ever grows there again. Want to replace it? Start fucking minor leagues in football and basketball and pay these people openly. I’ve got no problem whatsoever with paying a rich man’s son as a professional athlete, if he’s deemed to be worth the money.
SatanicPanic
@Provider_UNE: Yes, you nailed it. Responding to people saying “We don’t know what Diddy has done for his kid” with “well, he bought him a car that costs more than an education at UCLA” is a totally unwarranted and is clearly a sign of jealousy.
Seriously, this thread is full of comments that we’d laugh at if Repulicans had typed them. He EARNED it! It’s HIS MONEY! You’re JUST JEALOUS!
Felanius Kootea
@Martin: Really? The average UCLA athlete who was given an athletic scholarship to attend UCLA had a 4.05 GPA from high school (on a scale of 1.0 – 4.0 & not, say, MIT’s 5.0 scale) at the time he or she was applying? I find that very hard to believe; please provide links to a source that backs up that claim.
Edited for clarity.
Martin
I didn’t say anything about athletes. I said students. And UC will apply a limited number of honors/AP/IB grades to the GPA which carry 1.2x the usual credit. A student with straight As and maxing out the honors, and taking the recommended course load for UC admissions can earn a 4.4 GPA. UC does still maintain at least some semblance of academic merit even with their athletic admissions.
The source is me. You will find fewer higher authorities on the subject.
Felanius Kootea
@Martin: And you’ve requested that of every other star’s kid who’s won an athletic scholarship, of course. And have ample proof that P Diddy has never given a sizable donation to an institution of higher learning, so he needs CNN to harass his kid in order for him to do so.
Barf.
Provider_UNE
@SatanicPanic:
“well, he bought him a car that costs more than an education at UCLA”
And you keep making this point as if it has anything to do with the scholarship. So either we are a bunch of clueless dingbats (and I will grant the possibility in my case) or you are failing to articulate your point to the satisfaction of those who have yet to divine it.
You have also previously suggested that regardless of how his football career pans out he’ll just ride his daddies coattails, which is an assumption of facts not in evidence.
So until you can make a case that an expensive car and a rich Dad, should…And the case you are trying to make remains out of my grasp. What is your point?
…
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
I’m not sure what argument you were responding to, but it’s certainly not the argument I actually made. The world is as it is, and the data are what they are. You can decry it, but you can’t deny it.
Keith G
I figured Mitt Roomney had the odvious solution.
/snark
Mike Lamb
@burnspbesq: I also think there is likely a correlation between athletic success, especially football success, and applicants at a particular school.
SatanicPanic
@Provider_UNE: I’m just saying it would be a nice move for the son of a rich guy to decline the money or to give to a needy student. I think it’s a perfectly fair custom to establish in this country. I’m not saying it should be law or school policy. I’m also not disputing that CNN is likely bringing this up because he’s the son of P Diddy who is both black and a rapper.
I brought up the car because people keep saying “how do we know if Diddy ever did anything for his kid” as if Diddy is some deadbeat, which appears to me to be not the case.
I was exaggerating to make a point about his resume, but I don’t think it’s out of bounds to assume that his father’s name will be more useful to him than to be able to say that he got a football scholarship. That’s just life, not a dig at either Justin or his father.
lacp
@SteveM: You’ll get no argument from me on that score.
GF
Since when does a 3.75 high school GPA merit a ‘merit scholarship’ at a fine school like UCLA?
gwangung
@Mike Lamb:
No kidding.
Idiocracy, indeed. And not the way most people mean it.
We’re talking about YOU, bub.
gwangung
@SatanicPanic: No, we’re just laughing at people like you whose comments show absolutely no comprehension of the situation they’re commenting on.
There are critiques to be made, but you should be in the same county.
kc
@Provider_UNE:
I suspect his point is that Sean Coombs is filthy rich and his kid does not NEED financial help to go to whatever farkin’ school he feels like attending.
AxelFoley
@Silver:
Things that make you go “Hmmmm…”
StevenDS
@SteveM:
You’ll get an argument from me!
I refer you to this:
http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2012/5/10/3011344/ban-northeasterners-from-writing-about-college-football
eemom
@gogol’s wife:
That.
Also too, did the Combs kid apply for the thing here or not? No one seems to have a definitive answer and it is kind of an essential element of the question.
r€nato
Shorter CNN: He couldn’t possibly have earned it because AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, just like Obama.
…it really gets my goat that one of the major critiques of AA from conservatives, is that it could lead some people to assume that any successful black person in a company is there solely because of AA.
Then, who is the first to assume that any successful black guy got there thanks to race quotas and AA? Why… conservatives.
It’s a pretty neat trick to blame others for your racist, bigoted attitudes. They are pros at it. See: “you’re the REAL racist for noting racism!”
David
If anything is outrageous about this, it is that UCLA is handing out $57,000 “merit based” scholarships to football players. Also, a 3.75 GPA isn’t very high at UCLA — I’m sure it places him in the bottom half of incoming freshmen.
Heliopause
I agree, but perhaps not for the same reason. The information given in the CNN piece is pathetically inadequate to even begin to answer their question. Justin had a number of football scholarship offers. The GPA does not appear to be even relevant, other than its exceeding the minimum for a scholarship athlete. FBS schools have X number of football scholarships and they give them to the best athletes they can get their hands on, I’m not sure if Justin could renounce his scholarship and compete as a “walk-on” even if he wanted to. So the whole setup in the CNN piece is confusing from the get-go.
Mnemosyne
@r€nato:
Ding ding ding. That’s why they’re conflating academic scholarships and athletic scholarships and making it sound as though Coombs is getting a free ride based on his grades, which are really good for a student athlete, but “meh” for a regular student.
I do tend to agree with the people who say it would be a nice gesture for Coombs’ father to make an academic scholarship donation to the school. It would be especially great if he would make it specifically for African-American students just to watch all of the right-wing gibberers lose their shit entirely.
Mike Lamb
@eemom: No. You don’t apply for an athletic scholarship. The closest thing to an “application” may be sending a highlight video to a school where you would like to play. Otherwise, it’s a matter of the school’s head coach/coaching staff scouting Combs, evaluating his ability, and offering him a scholarship based on his athletic talent.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
I’ve never heard of a college where the athletes had to apply to get an athletic scholarship to play on the football team, especially at a Division I-A school like UCLA. I’m guessing that this is at best sloppy reporting from CNN.
Mike Lamb
@Heliopause: He could forego a scholarship and still be on the team. The problem is that there are a number of things that go along with being on scholarship that are not available to a “walk on”.
Emma
@eemom: I have worked in universities my whole life, admittedly not in Financial Aid, but my experience is that you do not apply for the sort of scholarship he got. It’s handed out by the coaches/university officials to attract good players, since the fact is that many alumni are very very VERY stupid about donating to the University because of their sports programs, not their academic ones. Now, the other side of the coin is that they took one look at the kid, said, “well, he checks off all the boxes on what we’re looking for and besides he has a rich daddy who might want to become a donor because his kid plays for us” and bingo.
Just Some Fuckhead
Just throwing this out there for discussion.
What if the parents spent lots of money on private tutors/coaches/camps/training/equipment/anything else imaginable?
Does the leg up here for the kid give him an unfair advantage over other kids without the means? Does this matter?
Discuss.
geg6
@eemom:
Jeebus fucking christ on a biscuit.
I have never seen so much ignorance about scholarships in one place in my entire life. Considering that I am a student aid officer and in charge of awarding scholarships, that’s saying quite a lot.
For all of you screaming about this young man applying for a scholarship when his daddy is rich:
1) The odds are that he never filled out any application except an admissions application. Most colleges and universities, at least the very large ones, don’t require applications for scholarships because we have a thing called computers that allow us to compile information into a data base and pick the best candidates for any of our scholarships. I know it’s hard to wrap your head around such amazing and futuristic information, but believe me, this makes the scholarship awarding process
massively and spectacularlya little easier for us.2) The vast majority of scholarships are not awarded from funds received from the state, in the case of state schools. 99.9% of our scholarships are endowed, meaning that someone donated the money for that scholarship and, as the donor, can set the criteria for the scholarship. And they can set that criteria up any way they want, as long as it’s legal. I have one on my campus that requires me to find two students with at least a 3.0 GPA who have “demonstrated a commitment to the assistance of others, who demonstrate a creative approach to endeavors, and who have overcome a personal obstacle or challenge.” Nowhere in that language do you see any discussion of financial need. I probably have about 75-90 other scholarships that require financial need, so this is one that I can use to reward good students who have done a lot in the community or who have overcome a difficult situation but who do not have financial need. Or I can give to a kid who has financial need but also has done a lot for others or overcome a lot. But the one thing I cannot do is limit my search for candidates only to those with financial need because that is not following the words or spirit of the contract agreed to with the donor.
3) Why should scholarships only go to students with financial need? That is not what scholarships are all about. That is what financial aid is about. But scholarships are meant to award students for achievement–whether that achievement is academic, athletic, a special talent, community service, or whatever. My university has monies specifically for students who have financial need (but not necessarily academic or any other sort of merit). We call them awards, not scholarships. I have awarded scholarships to students whose parents are employees of the university and who get a 75% discount because of it. It’s not that I’m showing favoritism to colleagues’ kids. It’s because the kid earned it and shouldn’t be discriminated against because of who his/her parents are.
Thread is probably dead, but I could not stand another second of the ignorance demonstrated here.
Mike Lamb
@Just Some Fuckhead: All things being equal, yes, it gives the kid a leg up. But there are inherent physical limitations that no amount of training will help. I also think you would be surprised at what’s available to elite high school athletes, with or without their own means.
John M
@eemom: @eemom: This part isn’t really in question. Some people in this thread have a basic understanding of how athletic scholarships work, and others do not. UCLA’s head football coach, or one of the assistant coaches with the head coach’s blessing, offered Justin Combs a scholarship based on his football ability and performance. In exchange for a full ride, Combs would be required to devote a ton of time to playing football, practicing, and conditioning. Other schools, including Virginia, Illinois, and some others, made comparable offers. After weighing those offers, Combs gave a (non-binding) verbal commitment to UCLA, and signed a (binding) letter of intent with UCLA in February. Had Combs declined UCLA’s offer, then his scholarship would have gone to another football player selected by the UCLA coaching staff. It’s possible that at some point Combs had to fill out an “application” for his financial aid, but as a practical matter, the selection process is entirely within the discretion of the coach, as long as the player can be admitted to the university.
Heliopause
@Mike Lamb:
Yeah, that’s what I was driving at.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
IMO, it’s because so much financial aid now goes towards loans and not grants. People conflate grants and scholarships as “free money” and get resentful because rich people get it.
If more student financial aid came in the form of grants, I think people would be less resentful, but parents and students will see a story like this and think, “How come I have to take out $50,000 in loans to go to UCLA because there’s no grant money available but Sean Combs’ son gets a free education?”
Mnemosyne
Also, too, depending on how you weight grades, Combs’ GPA is not out of line with other UCLA admissions for 2012, and is probably far ahead of the other football recruits.
SatanicPanic
@gwangung: Really? Then explain it to me. I don’t get why saying that it would be cool if Justin Combs either declined the money or if that’s not possible then donate an equal amount to some other students who could use it. It would be a classy move. If it’s not from some pool of money that would otherwise go to someone else, then fine give it to someone else. Makes it even better. I guess I didn’t know that asking the wealthy to do good deeds was off the table.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
Because if Combs declines the scholarship, it goes back to the athletic department, not back to UCLA. It’s not like Combs is preventing a biology major from going to UCLA because he accepted this scholarship. At most, he prevented a less-talented football player with worse grades from playing for UCLA.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that it would be a gracious gesture for Combs’ father to donate an academic scholarship to the school, but having Justin Combs refuse to attend UCLA would do exactly jack shit to allow a non-athlete to attend.
Mike Lamb
@SatanicPanic: Because the money going to Combs isn’t necessarily being taken from someone else that “needs” it. It would be going to someone else with high level football abilities. Sure, there are a lot of kids for whom a football scholarship represents their only financial means of setting foot on a college campus as a student, but there’s also a pretty good chance that the scholarship would go to another football player whose parents could afford to send their son to school even without the financial assistance that a football scholarship provides.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Right, and now that I understand this better, that’s the only real problem I have with the story, and it has nothing to do with young Combs. I do think it is fucked up that there are so many more scholarships awarded for athletics than for academic excellence and other abilities.
And yes, I fully understand that it’s because athletics is a cash cow for the universities. It’s STILL fucked up.
eemom
@Mike Lamb:
Yes, it would ONLY go to another football player.
That is my personal beef, as noted above.
ETA: I think Satanic is saying that the Combs family could, however, take the opportunity to “give back” to someone needy.
+Roger Burgess
@JoyfulA: You’re exactly right, we should not connect a parent’s ability to pay with their child’s ability to perform.
We should, however be questioning whether or not the parent’s wealth purchases enough opportunity that the child’s ability to perform is enhanced.
Then to that extent (someone’s going to drop that phrase from their rebuttal, and they’re going to be total morons for doing so), there’s no moral claim the child has on their ‘ability’ or ‘merit’ because without the benefit of great wealth, the child’s merit is undeserved.
In other words, there’s a beautiful case to be made that the school is merely paying back the child’s father for expenses already incurred.
Worse, it’s an athletic scholarship. There’s very little of meritocracy about physical prowess: you’re either randomly gifted with the potential ability, corresponding environment and mental ability to capitalize on it or you’re not. Hard work is essential, but no matter how hard a quadriplegic works, he’ll never ‘merit’ such a scholarship. No matter how hard a kid with severe mental deficiencies works, he’ll never ‘merit’ such a scholarship. No matter how hard-working, smart, and driven she is, had this been Susan Combs, she’ll never ‘merit’ such a scholarship.
Really, I completely fail to see any ‘merit’ in this at all.
Mike Lamb
@eemom: Why? It comes from a separate pool of funds that is generated by revenues from the athletic department, as well as from donations to the athletic department.
I also think you overestimate the number of athletic scholarships available. I’d guess there are probably 200 total full rides given to ALL athletes at a school. That’s not very many.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
As I said, the ignorance on this subject is pervasive. First, he’s an elite athlete with an excellent GPA. Any college or university is going to award him a scholarship because they want him to attend their school and the best way to show how much they want him is to offer him a large scholarship. Second, I’m guessing $50,000 does not cover every penny of his tuition, room, or board for four years. At my university, even the elite football players only get scholarships in the amount not covered by financial aid (excluding loans, though many still have to take out loans for personal expenses). I can’t name names, but I know of at least one current NFL player who attended this university who, although he was an elite among the elite athletes, had student loans for all four years he attended. And third, as I mentioned earlier, most scholarships are controlled by the criteria written by the donor, so the donor is the one who these parents should be screaming at. Or, in the case of state schools, the state legislatures. PA has a state grant program, so if you attend a school in PA and you qualify financially (the terms of which are set by the state legislature), you get a state grant, along with any other federal or university grants available to those with financial need. But our costs are quite high and this is due to the lack of funding by the state. When I started here, we got 12% of our budget from the state. As of last year (2011-12), we are down to 5%. If the current governor’s proposed cuts are approved by the legislature, we will be at about 3%. This is why the university is considering going private. That way, we can start offering all the tuition discounts that our private college/university competition throw to every student, regardless of merit or financial need. We are barred from doing that sort of thing as a state-related school.
geg6
@Mike Lamb:
If you look at my comment at #178, you’ll see that some universities don’t give full rides to anyone. If they qualify for federal or state grants, they must apply for and accept those before their scholarship is fully awarded.
Ron
@SteveM: Why is that a problem? It’s merit-based, not need-based. If he earned it he should get it.
Lyrebird
@The Red Pen:
Look, I know the motto is “it would be irresponsible not to speculate”, but here’s some more info: I’ve seen this kid play. He’s not bad, at the very least, and he went to an excellent prep school. Div-I schools have SAT/ACT minimums for their athletic scholarships which are hard for kids from inner-city or deep-rural public schools to meet.
For all that I hold deep suspicions about the kind of weird religious-like fervor that surrounds certain sports, and I hold my nose when this kid’s dad’s music is offered as some kind of exceptionally good stuff (give me NWA or KRS-1 instead any day ! ! ! ), but I don’t harbor this particular suspicion above.
Felinious Wench
From Rivals.com (I’m married to a coach, this is where to go to read about high school athletes of any kind), let’s see what Justin has to say:
The kid wants to do it on his own. Good for him.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne:
That + society should have the ability to shame the wealthy into doing these things is all I’m saying.
Felinious Wench
@Lyrebird:
Yep. That’s kept a couple of my husband’s very talented kids from Div. 1. They can’t make their test scores to qualify.
Kid’s a talented athlete and a good student…it’s not easy at all to play a sport at his level and make those kinds of grades. Isn’t this what we admire in any kid? Why should it be any different when his father is wealthy?
I hope he grows up and does great things…and donates back to UCLA on his own dime.
Felinious Wench
@geg6:
And football programs can have a max of 85 scholarship players at any time (if I remember correctly, our sport is basketball). Carrying a bunch of walk-ons in football isn’t fair to the kids…they risk severe injuries. Good coaches don’t carry a lot of them.
JGabriel
@burnspbesq:
Fair enough. I am decrying the world as it is, particularly merit-based scholarships, and particularly for non-educational achievements.
.
JGabriel
@Felinious Wench:
Because it’s giving him the same credit for winning the marathon as a lower or middle class kid, when he had a 25 mile head start.
.
Martin
@Felanius Kootea:
I would request it of every other star’s kid. But I don’t really give a shit if any of them do it or not. The scholarship was earned. The rich have the luxury of being dicks on the issue by having the means to make this right by society or not. The rest of us don’t. And most means-scholarship endowments are anonymous by request of the donor, so only he will know if he’s made right or not. I’m fine with that. I don’t like it when people give money as some sort of shrine to their own wealth, so I have to trust that anonymous giving happens.
I was only addressing the responses that a 3.75 is a competitive GPA for UCLA. It’s not. It’s not even close – and that even goes for the 2nd tier UCs. So if you have a kid aiming for a UC – aim a lot higher – they’ll need it.
geg6
@JGabriel:
You know, I usually don’t peg you as a silly commenter here, but this has lowered my opinion of you by quite a bit. So you are all for punishing or discriminating against a kid because of his parents, right? Oh, just rich kids. Even when they are good students and have much talent. Fuck ’em. So the next step is to deny scholarships to anyone whose parents went to college because, you know, they start the educational process with a giant head start compared to the kid whose parents cook up meth in their Appalachian mountain holler. In fact, let’s just disqualify every student whose parents have a job or savings or a home and only give scholarships to students whose parents don’t. And let’s not take into account the wishes of those providing the cash or the students’ GPAs or SATs or special talents or community service or any of the myriad other reasons besides financial need for which scholarships are given. Only the poorest of the poor should get them and no one else should.
Felanius Kootea
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for posting this – this is the kind of data that’s really helpful. I didn’t realize that UCLA calculates both weighted (5.0 scale) and unweighted (4.0 scale) GPAs for their admits, to reflect honors classes taken in high school.
Since P Diddy has given over half a million to at least one university in the past, I’m sure he’ll have no problem donating again, CNN or no CNN.
geg6
@Martin:
Huh? I think UCLA is a good school and all, but I was unaware that they had become Stanford or one of the Ivies. Funny, but we get students here who were accepted at UCLA and the GPAs I see on them are not all 3.75 and above. I’m here to tell you that you can easily get into UCLA with 3.75 GPA. Easily. Now, you might not get the exact program you want (or at least, not right away) but your claim is, on its face, ridiculous.
geg6
@Felanius Kootea:
We do the same. Many good schools with great athletic programs do the same. We, despite the popular mythology, want our athletes to be good students, too.
Mike Lamb
@JGabriel: This comment is…painful.
Felanius Kootea
@Martin: See Mnemosyne’s post above. Justin Combs GPA is not out of line with other 2012 admits as you claim, if you’re using the unweighted 4.0 scale, which most *high schools* use. But instead of pointing me to data I was just supposed to take your word for it. The only thing missing from that UCLA data is a breakdown of GPA’s for athletic recruits. Now I bet you he’d be close to the top of that list.
If your point is that athletics shouldn’t be a consideration for admissions, make that point. If you’re up in arms because 51% of UCLA 2012 admits have between a 3.7-3.99 GPA on a 4.0 scale, and you think that’s too low, make that point. Otherwise, the data don’t quite match your statements. We are discussing an athletic scholarship, awarded for Justin’s ability to play football while exceeding NCAA minimum academic eligibility standards. I doubt that CNN took into consideration UCLA’s version of weighted versus unweighted GPAs when reporting Justin’s high school GPA.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
Take a look at the chart I linked to — are you talking about weighted or unweighted GPA? Is Combs’ GPA weighted or unweighted?
And are you talking about overall GPA in the academic student body, or GPA for student athletes, who regularly get admitted with grades that would never allow them to be admitted through the regular process?
I don’t mind talking about how college football and college basketball distort universities, but can we at least stay on topic and not wander off into the weeds?
@JGabriel:
Sorry, this is just a stupid comment. You really think that the biggest influence on athletic success is how rich your parents are?
Funny, my parents were pretty rich, and yet I was still terrible at soccer. I guess I just needed them to be really rich and I could have been Mia Hamm because, after all, rich parents can do anything, so any actual physical limitations are meaningless.
gvg
I have more to add.
If he got an actual athletic scholarship CNN shouldn’t have called it a merit scholarship. They are not the same thing.
Scholarships have many funding sources and schools don’t even control most of them. If he got a real merit scholarship-the donor sets the rules. The federal government doesn’t give that many-I don’t happen to know of any except graduate work that could be called merit scholarships-oh except for the service acadamies. The states have 50 different answers and in Florida it’s not the same from year to year though I would say their are decade trends. The states also give need based aid, again 50 different answers that change. The schools do have their own funds to award every school different and at least at big schools some departments have their own funds of funds they administer from private donors. Companies and individuals and foundations all award both scholarships(merit) and grants(need).
We have a University Foundation that administers most of the money left to us in wills according to what the donors wish’s were. Some donors only cared about gpa others need. some wanted students who came from their home town, their high school, their county. Because their are so many independant sources, they are often contradictory. Complaining about it is a waste of breath. People also leave money in trust the schools do not control.
There is still a huge shortage of funding by the way and don’t get taken in by claims their is a lot of money YOU could have if you just applied. However what there is, is chaotic and does not have to follow the same rules. \
there actually are or were private athletic scholarships although I have my doubts that they were really OK under NCAA rules. supposedly the Nebraska legislature was giving out tuition scholarships to U Nebraska walkons. That may have been ended though. I repeat, athletic scholarships are not merit scholarships. Most schools have a minimum gpa/SAT score. In practice if a kid is too far behind the usual student at a certain school he’ll flunk out which means the coach won’t have the benefit of enough juniors and seniors and is more likely to lose games, but not all of them have recognized that.
KayK
I’m very late to this party as I’ve been hypnotized by busy-work all day. I just had to comment.
When my mom was a high school student, during the Great Depression, she won a National merit Scholar scholarship. Her family was not rich by any means, but her father’s general store provided enough that they were comfortable, even during the worst of the depression. My mom always resented the grumbling and whispering that went on in her little town because she took a scholarship that she didn’t ‘need’. She worked hard and earned that scholarship, at the same time delivering milk before school and either working in the store or doing housework and preparing dinner after school. Her dad’s store didn’t have anything to do with her accomplishment, and she resented folks trying to take it away from her.
I know where she would stand on this if she were still alive. She would tell folks to celebrate this young man’s success. There are needs-based scholarships, and I would be outraged if Justin tried to get one of those. But a merit-based scholarship is based on his own achievements, and he should be proud to take it.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Jeff Spender:
I can understand what you’re saying, but it comes across as kind of heartless. It isn’t as bad as some asshole who says, “Hey I was born poor and I made $47,000,000, and if I can do it, then any poor kid can. The ones who stay poor are just lazy bums, that’s all,” but there’s the same belief underlying it, that people who haven’t thrown off the anvils hanging around their necks from their childhoods just don’t care enough to bother.
I’m glad you overcame your upbringing. Good for you. But not everybody is you; not everybody has your personality or skills or strengths or weaknesses or has had the same life unfold that you had. (Not to say they had fewer skills or worse personalities, or awhatever; only that those skills, personality, and so on, weren’t the right ones to help them when they needed it.)
Sometimes people make it out of the hole they’re born into because the right teacher or friend happened to come into their lives at the right time; people who you’d swear had the same characteristics can end up sinking only because the circumstances weren’t right for them to find a way to keep afloat.
I can speak about this with some knowledge because I’m the kind of person you would normally think would be a born success. Good parents. My father was on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. I lived in a town with the best schools in the state growing up. I was reasonably smart. My parents were not rich, but had more than enough money to live. And yet, I’ve always struggled. I’ve never had any real success at any kind of a job I’ve tried, and if it weren’t for my wife, who earns a good living, and is willing to put up with my obnoxiousness, I’d be living under a bridge.
I know now that all my struggles in school and at work stem from severe inattentive ADD, but I think often about how things might have turned out otherwise if my parents and teachers–and I myself–had known about it when I was little, rather than finding out about it only two years ago.
I know of people with my kind of ADD who are real go-getters. And I look like a loser next to them. But I can’t help wondering how much of the wide gap between them and me is that I’m lazy, careless and irresponsible, and how much is the right person coming into their lives just when they needed them most, or the right thing happening to them just when it could do the most good for them.
You ended by saying that “They can make it happen if the want it.” But how many poor people do you think don’t want to get a better life? How many who had your upbringing do you think want to keep on going the way they’ve grown up?
This hits a sore spot for me, which is why I’m going on so long about it. But I spent most of my life believing that I was a lazy bum. People never told me that’s what I was in so many words, but I got the message all the same. And I couldn’t understand what why I was such a loser of a person, since I wanted the same success–in school, in work–as everybody else, but my character was just so obviously weak that I wasn’t willing to try. And that seemed weird, since I did try, or at least I thought I was. And then, two years ago, I found out I had been trying, I just couldn’t do a lot of things well.
The guy who tested and diagnosed me said one of the most wonderful things I ever heard when he told what the results were. He said, “This isn’t a character flaw.” I’m still learning to really believe that about myself. But these character based explanations of poverty really piss me off, since I know so well that I would have been wallowing in hopeless poverty if I hadn’t been so lucky as to draw the mother and father that I did. Poor people are’t lazy; poor people do care. Sometimes life is just stacked so badly against them that it isn’t enough.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Again, the block-quote thing didn’t work right. The frist three paragraphs were the other guy’s. My blathering begins with the fourth .
Provider_UNE
@SatanicPanic:
I get you now. Thank you. Sure it would be nice for the kid to do so, but the suggestion that he should, ,particularly when we really don’t know the particulars seems like it really is none of ours, or for that matter CNN’s business.
Modem went down for a bit otherwise I would have replied to you sooner.
…
blogasita
There should always be a point at which the parent’s income wipes out the scholarship. I know schools have to compete for the best students in many different areas, but still, multi-millionaire’s kids shouldn’t receive scholarships, period. I don’t know if the people criticizing this on CNN are motivated by racial motives, but I know I’m not. And yes, I’d say the same thing about Bill Gates kids.
However, this may be a clever ploy by the university. They probably know they are going to get way more than that back in donations and possibly fundraiser but Combs. Maybe they’re smarter than we think!
Mnemosyne
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
I’m 99 percent sure that my niece and nephew’s father has severe ADHD since every one of his kids so far has been diagnosed with it. He’s never been diagnosed, because he’s been in and out of jail and doing drugs since he was a teenager.
My nephew was very, very lucky that they were able to get him into a residential school in Montana that deals with kids with psychiatric problems (he (and his dad) may be bipolar as well as ADHD), but we all know that if the family hadn’t been able to access those resources, he’d probably be in a jail cell next to his dad by now.
Add in my own struggles with ADHD and, yeah, I’m not willing to buy into the “all you need is willpower” BS either.
SatanicPanic
@Provider_UNE: Thanks, I was just trying to make a general point, I don’t have anything against Diddy or his son. The only issue I’ve ever had with Diddy was his giggling on Notorious BIG tunes.
Mike Lamb
@blogasita: What? An affluent athlete shouldn’t be allowed to get an athletic scholarship? That’s assinine.
Comrade Luke
Can we get Luke Russert, Chelsea Clinton and Megan McCain to weigh in on this?
zoot
Is anyone asking the question: why is UCLA, a taxpayer subsidized institution offering scholarships to the spawn of multimillionaires, regardless of merit?
Aardvark Cheeselog
@elm: And I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort, just that it smells bad to me for a rich man’s son to accept this kind of help.
@Yutsano: OK, so maybe it was a total surprise to the kid that he was awarded this. You don’t think the topic ever came up when he was talking to the coaches?
Look, I’m totally OK with the notion of merit scholarships, but I do think there’s a point on the income scale where nobless oblige should kick in and you should leave the money on the table for somebody who needs it worse. This suggests to me that the Combs family is way, way past that point. Also, too, with that kind of background the kid is way, way past the point where “making it on his own” could bear any possible relation to reality.
Mnemosyne
@zoot:
You’re asking the wrong question. The question is, why do football players get free rides to college while students who just want an education have to take out massive loans to do it?
Combs’ father is a distraction in this story, because Combs didn’t get a merit scholarship for his academic skills, he got an athletic scholarship for his football skills.
So why do college athletes deserve a better deal than the rest of the students?
Matt P.
@SatanicPanic:
A plain reading of the snippet of transcript above suggests that he didn’t “apply” for the scholarship… he’s playing football for D-I UCLA, and so whether the scholarship is athletic or academic “merit-based,” it was probably offered to him as a recruitment incentive.
zoot
@Mnemosyne:
disagree that my question is the wrong one – it is the critical one.
tax payer subsidized schools provide athletic scholarships because they make money on athletic programs thereby supporting the institution and lowering the requirement for tax payer support.
Cthulhu
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
Yeah I was wondering the same thing. Scholarships, I always thought, were for those kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get into college.
Why apply for a scholarship you don’t need? Obviously, the kid can afford tuition. So why take a scholarship you don’t need away from a equally deserving student who doesn’t have a rich daddy?
I don’t see any racism here (Maybe I’m missing something), but it seems like a dick move to me. It’s not like UCLA wouldn’t make sure Justin had a spot in school for a generous donation by P Diddy. That scolarship should go to someone who needs it.
BruinKid
This was such a bullshit hit piece by CNN. They don’t even seem to realize that athletic scholarships are NOT funded by taxpayer money!