Monetary Rewards for Academic Excellence: Motivating or Misguiding

Through the years, we've seen people excel in different fields, contests, or professions, and in return, they're given some form of reward, which may be monetary, gift items, or medals, and it's seen as a sign of compensation or commendation for their outstanding performance. The same has been true in the last few years in schools, and so there's been some debate as to whether it's ideal for students to be given monetary rewards for academic excellence. To me, this is a very critical topic that should be critically examined before reaching any conclusions, and I'll love to share my take on it.

To start with, it's worth noting that being outstanding academically doesn't come by chance; it's a result of hard work and commitment to reading, research, and a bid to understand what's being taught or a yarn of curiosity to know about things. This is why most of these brilliant students excel beyond their peers, who tend to only play, are not dedicated to studying well enough, and the like. With this reality, it would seem unfair if we didn't reward students who dedicated their all to excel.

But while we might want to agree to reward students for their academic excellence, monetary reward doesn't seem ideal, in my opinion. Of course, money is good and can go a long way toward impacting our lives, but now we're talking about students, and not all of them are fully grown to the point of being able to handle the weight of having so much money, so giving them a reward of this kind could make them spend it on things that might derail their concentration on their studies.

Not forgetting that it could also affect their colleagues in a negative way, not all students would be motivated to strive harder to study more, so they can also arrive at that stage in the coming section. Others would feel dejected or demotivated seeing someone else get the reward while they've got nothing despite trying their best in reading.

Monetary reward can be ideal if it's given to the parents of such students to do as they deem fit for their wards; however, giving it directly to the students can be a disaster, like I stated above, so the best way to reward a student due to academic excellence would be in the form of gift items that vary in price or value to first, second, third, and the like in that peeking order for rewards based on the position of the students in their class.

But in the event that such a student excels in an academic competition such as debate, spelling B, math competitions, and the like, then the reward would be more ideal if it were in the form of a free scholarship, sponsoring their education to a substantial level, or an assurance of employment in a big organization immediately after they complete their education.

These, I believe, would foster a healthy academic competition among students to devote more time to their academics, so they can, in the process, save their parents from the stress of paying for their tuition fee in school and as well help themselves in securing a sustainable job even before they graduate from college, and that would help ease their stress of searching for a job and getting disqualified due to their academic excellence, which makes the interviewer feel threatened that his position would be at stake if he employs such candidates.

But then, on the other hand, is it entirely bad to reward students with monetary rewards when they excel in their academics? I don't think it's entirely bad because we must in one way keep rewarding the best so as to encourage those who aren't doing well, and when we fail to reward them adequately, it could reduce the amount of dedication students paid to their studies because they weren't different from those who didn't study.

It makes us wonder what society really cherishes between excellence and unreasonable things. Take, for instance, shows like the BBN (Big Brother Naija) TV show where people are rewarded handsomely for doing absolutely nothing or exposing their bodies, and yet students who do something reasonable aren't rewarded at all or given peety gifts as a form of reward.

I think we need to strike a balance in this regard to reach a conclusion on what rewards should be given to students for excellence in performance, which I think should be based on age and level of education. Students in elementary and high schools could be rewarded with gifts and double promotion of scholarships, and those in college and above would be old enough to know how to handle money.

So a monetary reward, job allocation before graduation, and the like would be a good reward for them at that level, and it should also come with a clause that their performance won't drop beyond idea, because some students could, because of an assured reward of that nature, go unserious about their academics till their performance declines, so a clause of substantial level would be good to keep them in check.

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Thanks so much for your time. Have a wonderful day ahead and stay blessed.

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