The Scholarship Committee’s One Place
A church-funded scholarship committee in Buea has 1,500,000 CFA francs for one year and three finalists. Candidate A scored 18/20 in the entrance test, but her family runs a profitable transport business and she already has a sponsor. Candidate B scored 16/20; her mother is a widow with four children, and B works at a market stall after school to pay fees. Candidate C scored 15/20 and is a national athlete; without the scholarship she may lose her place because training fees are high. The committee must choose one candidate; splitting the money would not cover any candidate’s full fees. Members disagree: one says merit alone should decide; another says need should decide; a third says the school’s reputation benefits most from supporting the athlete. Using ethical reasoning, recommend a decision and justify it.
1. Identify the morally relevant considerations and assess the three proposed criteria-merit, need, and institutional benefit-from a utilitarian and a Kantian perspective.
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Morally relevant considerations: academic merit, financial need, the marginal difference the scholarship makes, fair equality of opportunity, the school’s legitimate interests, and the danger of rewarding arbitrary advantage. Utilitarian: compare expected welfare gains. A already has a sponsor and a profitable family business, so the marginal benefit is low. B’s family faces severe constraint; the scholarship likely prevents dropout and improves siblings’ welfare. C’s athletic loss may matter, but reputation benefits are speculative and may not outweigh B’s basic educational need. Kantian: do not use B merely as a needy case, nor C merely as a reputation tool; apply a consistent, publicly defensible rule that treats each as an end. Merit is relevant because it respects effort, but it cannot justify ignoring drastic differences in ability to pay. Institutional benefit is permissible only if it does not instrumentalise the candidate. Verdict: need plus merit is the most defensible combined criterion; pure merit and pure reputation are too narrow.
2. Recommend one candidate and state the strongest objection to your recommendation, then reply to that objection.
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Recommendation: B, because she is close to A in merit (16/20 against 18/20), the scholarship is likely to make the largest marginal difference, and her disadvantage is not her fault. Objection: This ignores A’s superior merit and C’s risk of losing a national athletic place; it may also punish A for her family’s success. Reply: Merit need not be the sole criterion when resources are scarce and the aim is to prevent educational exclusion. A has an alternative sponsor; C can seek sports funding and the committee can advocate for it. B’s 16/20 shows she meets a threshold, so need can legitimately break the tie. Procedural safeguard: publish the weights in advance, record reasons, and avoid humiliating disclosure of family circumstances. This makes the decision fair and reviewable, not merely charitable.