shameful.

I saw this happening at the University of Georgia after the HOPE scholarship was created. HOPE mainly benefits middle class kids, although lower income people buy more lottery tickets to fund the program.

NYT Editorial
Public Colleges as ‘Engines of Inequality’
Published: November 23, 2006

"Democrats who ran for Congress this fall made the cost of college a big campaign issue. Now that they’ve won control of the House and Senate, they can prepare to act swiftly on at least some of the factors that have priced millions of poor and working-class Americans right out of higher education. The obvious first step would be to boost the value of the federal Pell Grant program — a critical tool in keeping college affordable that the federal government has shamefully ceased to fund at a level that meets the national need.

But larger Pell Grants can’t solve this crisis alone. Policy changes will also be required in the states, where public universities have been choking off college access and upward mobility for the poor by shifting away from the traditional need-based aid formula to a so-called merit formula that heavily favors affluent students. The resulting drop in the fortunes of even high-performing low-income students — many of whom no longer attend college at all — is documented in an eye-opening report released recently by the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation devoted to education reform."

• Aid to students from families making over $100,000 has more than quadrupled at state schools.
  
• state flagship schools are measuring success by how many applicants they turn away and SAT scores, which favor richer students who can afford the study courses