Scholarship policies are preserving barriers to low-income participation

As a student from a low-income background, there is a zero per cent chance I’d have made it to Yale University without the assistance of several generous scholarships.

I’m certainly grateful for this support, and those not inside the scholarship system might wonder how anyone could grumble about winning a scholarship. However, receiving these bursaries has not made me lose sight of flaws in the system that may limit the scholarships’ effectiveness in helping those from disadvantaged families reach America’s top universities.

In particular, low-income students can be pushed into avoidable financial difficulties by colleges’ policies on scholarship displacement, the practice whereby they reduce their financial aid to a student depending on the amount of non-university external scholarships the student may also receive.

I first experienced the financial consequences of scholarship displacement as an undergraduate at Rollins College, a liberal arts institution in my native Florida. I was fortunate enough to transfer to Rollins following my time as a community college student through the generosity of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which awarded me a $40,000-a-year (£32,000) scholarship to complete my bachelor’s degree. I also received a substantial financial aid package from Rollins, which helped cover a significant portion of my annual tuition cost.

However, the Cooke Scholarship is a last-dollar scholarship, which means that it only provides financial assistance for expenses not already covered by the scholar’s college or university. During my initial semester at Rollins, my financial aid package from the college already covered a substantial portion of my tuition, so the Cooke Foundation was told by Rollins to provide a last-dollar payment of just $9,231. Subsequently, once the remainder of my tuition was charged, I was left with $5,671 from the scholarship to cover my living expenses.

After buying the required books and supplies for the semester, that figure fell to less than $5,000 to cover the cost of off-campus living for the semester, including housing, meals and transportation. Rollins is situated in Winter Park, an expensive city favoured by high-earning families from nearby Orlando, so I had to reside 10 miles from the college, on the outskirts of Orlando, necessitating a lengthy daily commute.

Despite having, in principle, been awarded $40,000, the Cooke Foundation refrained from sending more money to cover my living expenses because it calculated those expenses based on the cost of attendance (COA) estimates provided by Rollins. The COA, also known as a college’s “sticker price”, is estimated yearly and typically governs the award a student receives from last-dollar scholarships. Any additional award beyond the costs outlined in the COA will displace a scholar’s institutional financial aid, meaning they do not benefit from any additional funds sent.

The COA outlined by Rollins massively underestimated the actual cost of living in Winter Park, but if the Cooke Foundation had sent me an extra $5,000, for example, Rollins would have offset my institutional aid by that amount. This would allow Rollins, it claimed, to provide more financial assistance to other students in need.

Although this approach may appear equitable, it frequently places the individuals it aims to support in challenging financial situations. Displacing institutional aid for students with more financial means is justifiable. However, such substitution is inappropriate for low-income and vulnerable students because it inadvertently creates obstacles that the funds are designed to eliminate and worsens financial disparities on campus.

This issue is starting to gain national legislative attention, so there is all the more reason for colleges to act. They should not relinquish their financial commitments to support low-income students once those students receive external funding. Instead, they must implement transparent guidelines that prevent scholarships being offset against other forms of financial aid to ensure that external awards directly benefit the awardee.

Updating the estimated COA is also essential because low-income students often do not have the income necessary to meet unanticipated living costs.

Failing to implement these changes will maintain a system that financially penalises low-income students for winning external scholarships, eroding the value of their accomplishments. Scholarships should empower low-income students, not put them back to square one or impose avoidable financial burdens.

Wyatt Deihl is studying for a Master of Public Health at Yale University.