Monday, March 24, 2008

Lenny Dykstra's "Scholarship Kid"

According to my New Yorker, Lenny Dykstra's kid, Cutter, will attend UCLA in the fall on a baseball scholarship. Lenny Dykstra is richer than God. UCLA is a public university, and in California, one of the two premier public universities for California residents. I say, "not fair." True, I went to college on scholarship, but hey, my parents were very poor, and my scholarships were as much merit-based as need-based.

I actually do like baseball a lot (go A's!), so this isn't an anti-sports sentiment (in fact, I am not overly concerned with the bulldozing of the old oak trees at Berkeley to make room for a new athletic center). But I just take umbrage at the thought that Dykstra's kid is going to school on scholarship, when clearly his father can afford to pay. There should be some rule that unless the kid is an independent, if the parents can pay, then the financial aid/scholarships are redistributed in a need-based way to other students. Isn't this what Harvard does?

This is not the case of some middle class or upper middle class family strained by bloated tuition costs and too many kids and the subprime mortgage crisis--Dykstra is obviously rich, and should pay for his kid to go to school. California taxpayers' money should not go to pay for trust fund babies' educations.

Am I being unreasonable here? Discuss.