>I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine with

>I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. This is the definition of "means-testing" and it is bad. Testing and "checking" that the recipients of social welfare is complicated and doomed to create a group of excluded people who believe they should have merited it. Means-testing introduces fiscal cliffs, creates a separate of haves and have-nots, and lots of other unnecessary anxieties between classes of peoples. The savings means-testing produces is tiny in aggregate and the harm to culture is large. Moreover, means-testing becomes the fulcrum that anti-social welfare reformists use to destroy programs. Means-testing introduces an additional point of failure, brittleness that can be exploited. It's hard to rip away a program that is granted to all comers, but if there is a clear line between haves and have-nots, they you can just move the line. This has happened multiple times to the Affordable Care Act, and states regularly do this to medicaid and food stamp programs, to their detriment. The most successful social programs have no means testing: social security, medicare. If you value social welfare programs, you will not inflict means-testing on them.