A huge problem I find with financial aid policy at many educational institutions, from elementary school all the way to university, is that the aid is often cut off at a specific threshold. For instance, if you are making $149,999 a year, you might qualify for $20k financial aid. But if you are making $150,000, you get none. So the two families with nearly identical situations are given grossly different treatment.

I don't understand why it's not a continuous scale that just approaches zero at a certain point, rather than these hard cut-offs.

edit: just saw that someone else made a similar comment. Mine is referring to education in general and not the article specifically, and in fact I have personally run into this situation. It seems that educational institutions would be by definition smarter about how they handle this.