Tuesday, the University of Arizona, in collaboration with Apple, bestowed iPads upon approximately 200 students who will be transfering from Pima to the UA in the following semester. At $730.42 a pop, that comes out to the handsome sum of $146,000.
Now, when we initially received the press release for this event, it looked like nothing more than a lesson in misplaced incentives. Here are a group of students who made the economical decision to fulfill their general education requirements at a community college at a much lower price than they would have paid had they attended UA from the beginning, and, notably, are not even necessarily eligible for need-based financial aid. Indeed, the only thing the transfer students had to do in order to receive the iPad was take STU 210 at Pima, a class whose syllabus is devoted to teaching students how to transfer to the Univeristy of Arizona.
Read the full story at the Arizona Desert Lamp.