So Justin Combs, son of son of hip-hop mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, has been given a full athletic scholarship to UCLA. Justin, a football player at New Rochelle Iona Prep, will apparently play for Bruins next year. The scholarship is worth about $54,000.
P. Diddy has about $475 million. That’s pretty much the problem. According to an article by Dennis Romero at LA Weekly:
Should a multimillionaire’s son be able to get a free-ride scholarship to a state school that has been struggling with budget cuts and raging student protests?
If that son plays football well, guess so.
And we’ll note that UCLA is a school where student tuition and fees have nearly tripled in the last 10 years.
Whatever. This one totally makes sense.
Of course, Justin Combs, who apparently received a $360,000 car for his 16th birthday, doesn’t actually need a scholarship, but the athletic director apparently had 285 full athletic scholarships to dole out. Who would you give them to?
Realistically UCLA knows that Combs will be really good for selling tickets, and probably increasingly applications, so the kid gets to college for free.
Eh, makes sense to me. There’s a lot wrong with higher education funding today, and there’s a lot specifically wrong in California public colleges, but this decision is just pragmatic.
In deciding to attend UCLA, Combs reportedly turned down scholarship offers from Illinois, Virginia, and Wyoming.
P. Diddy in Laramie, Wyoming would have been funny. [Image via]
