As their tuitions escalate, public colleges and universities are experimenting with formulas and incentives to attract strong students. For nearly a decade, Georgia has granted free tuition to high school graduates with a B or better average - regardless of financial need - to stop the brain drain of top students who left the state for college and never returned. These merit scholarships have boosted the number of smart kids in the state's universities but, because some of them don't "need" the aid they're getting, it has also left low-income students competing for a smaller share of state dollars. So say the critics, anyway. By contrast, Texas' "10 percent law" - which guarantees admission to the state's university system to the top ten percent of graduates of every Texas high school - sends a steady stream of African American and Hispanic students to public campuses while squeezing out many other strong (disproportionately white) students who attend competitive middle-class and suburban high schools. See "B's, Not Need, Are Enough for Some State Scholarships," by Greg Winter, The New York Times, October 31, 2002; and "Texas Colleges' Diversity Plan May Be New Model," by Lee Hockstader, The Washington Post, November 4, 2002
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