This afternoon Arizona State University announced it would rename its largest and most prestigious scholarship program after President Obama.
This has been greeted by full-throated mirth and derision from a good chunk of the Kossack community -- a communitywide judgment that, in essence, declares this scholarship to be a triviality awarded by a worthless university.
So perhaps it would be helpful if I explained exactly what the newly renamed Obama scholarship is... and what it means if you're a high school student in Arizona.
To get one of these scholarships is a really big deal. I should know. I have a college degree because of it.
Let me take you back, if you will, to the early 1990s. I'd just graduated from high school with a gold-plated GPA and high SAT scores. After plowing through a ton of recruitment brochures, I settled on Northwestern. And I got in. Evanston, here I come!
The scholarship package they sent certainly looked decent... $20,000 a year, when you added up scholarships, loans and work study. But Northwestern is very expensive... even in those days. A $6,000 a year gap remained. But that wouldn't be a problem... would it?
Two months passed before my dad got up the nerve to tell me, and I thought he would die when he did. Yup, that gap is a problem... a big one. We just can't afford to send you to Northwestern this fall.
You see, my family had just emerged from bankruptcy. No cash left in the bank. You'll need to ask for more financial aid if you want to go, he said.
So I did. Their answer? Sorry, kid... your family income is too high. ($40,000 a year, I believe.)
But... my dad says we're spending every nickel we have just to stay afloat. Can't I do more work study? More loans? Anything?
Sorry, the university said. Your parents must put up that portion of your tuition. If they can't, you can't go.
It was June. I was supposed to start classes in August. Exercising typical 18-year-old foresight, I hadn't bothered to apply at other universities. Northwestern or bust. And I'd just busted out.
I'd gone from Northwestern to community college. Or so I thought.
Then I remembered that envelope I'd received a few months back... from Arizona State University.
Turns out ASU had an interesting scholarship program for Arizona high school students graduating in the top 5% of their class -- four years, full tuition.
And I'd tossed the damn thing unopened on my desk. At the time, I shared the derision for the university that many of you have expressed over the last several days.
ASU? Puhleeze. With all of the schools I could choose from, I'm supposed to consider AS-frickin'-U?
But in June, the clock was ticking. Turns out beggars really can't be choosers.
I read over the letter. It was months old. No way this offer could still be open, I thought. But I called anyway.
Turns out you have to officially reject the scholarship to lose it. And since I'd never done that, the offer was still available, if I wanted it.
And so I was on my way to ASU.
Yes, ASU's legendary reputation as a party school with few rivals are quite true. I did partake in some of those benders on occasion, though I never did attend a class hung over, as so many students eventually do. Most of the time I was too busy working, commuting back and forth between campus and my folks' house, and studying.
In the end, it turned out I was quite lucky to land where I did. You see, after a couple of years of floating between majors, I decided I wanted to be a journalist.
Know what the top three journalism schools in the country are? Columbia, the University of Missouri, and... Arizona State University.
Over the next several years I learned my trade from some of the best journalism teachers in the country. I got to meet Walter Cronkite a couple of times at our annual fundraising dinner (the j-school there is named after him). And I learned how to be a journalist by doing -- three years on the student newspaper, the last as its editor.
I graduated summa cum laude. I had a degree from one of the best journalism schools in the country -- and no student loan debt.
Would everything have worked out, had it not been for that scholarship from ASU, all those years ago? Probably. I suspect I would've gone to community college for a year or two, built up some savings, then gone somewhere else. Probably not Northwestern, but somewhere decent out of state.
But in the end, it worked out.
My degree launched me into a career in journalism. Six years later, it was on to public relations -- a career that has been quite good to me, professionally and personally.
ASU helped me do that. The scholarship I received helped me do that... and it did so without piling on a nickel of debt.
That is the scholarship that will now be known as the President Obama Scholars Program.
For years and decades to come, the President Obama Scholarship will help thousands of bright young people from across the state of Arizona achieve a college education without hamstringing them with debt.
Kids like me, almost two decades ago.
I know it's not an honorary degree. I wish it was. For ASU to be the first university in the nation to present Barack Obama with an honorary scholarship in his presidency would be an immense honor ... to Arizona State University.
But understand that this scholarship will be helping students for a long, long time... long after the pomp of an honorary degree has faded.
It will be helping thousands of students get an education for free. Students like me. Students a lot like Barack Obama, many years ago.
And it is an enormous honor to know that the scholarship program that helped launch my professional life will be named for him.