U-M starts new set of aid awards

U-M starts new set of aid awards
They replace those based on gender, race
Friday, June 22, 2007
BY DAVE GERSHMAN News Staff Reporter
In another move to comply with a statewide ban on some forms of affirmative action, the University of Michigan has eliminated scholarships that it awarded to students partly on the basis of female gender or racial minorities.
U-M's central financial aid office discontinued the Scholar Recognition Award and Michigan Scholar Award - recruitment scholarships that are given to several hundred students a year - because race was considered as an eligibility criteria. They were replaced with new scholarships that give consideration to socioeconomic status and other data. The office gives out $2 million in scholarships a year to entering freshmen.
Other schools and colleges at U-M give out $35 million in mostly merit-based scholarships, but they also reviewed financial aid programs and made changes where needed to comply with the law, said U-M Provost Teresa Sullivan.
"Our office of general counsel spent quite a lot of time reviewing this,'' Sullivan said Thursday as she provided an overview of scholarship changes tied to Proposal 2. "Typically, the change in criteria has moved towards socioeconomic status, or some other form of underrepresentation, such as being a first-generation college student.''
Pamela Fowler, director of the financial aid office, said it's too soon to determine how the revisions will affect the makeup of the student body because the changes were implemented in the midst of the admissions cycle. She said she did not believe opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities - black, Hispanic and Native American students - have changed. She said race was a factor in a small number of the scholarship dollars her office administered.
Shanta Driver, national spokesperson for BAMN, a pro-affirmative action group challenging the ban in court, predicted a "tremendous decline'' in scholarships for poor black and Hispanic students because there are many more poor white students in Michigan. Driver said that using socioeconomic status has not worked to maintain diversity at public universities in California, which passed a similar ban on affirmative action.
"A lack of financial aid is the single highest reason that black students do not come to a University of Michigan and stay,'' said Driver.
Driver said U-M has other options, such as offering scholarships that consider whether students come from urban areas like Detroit, Flint and Saginaw.
U-M stopped awarding scholarships with race or gender as criteria on Dec. 22, after legal wrangling over the implementation of Proposal 2, the state constitutional amendment prohibiting race and gender preferences in public education, public hiring and public contracting.
By that date, 183 Scholar Recognition Awards that pay full tuition had been offered to in-state students (80 percent accepted), and 144 Michigan Scholar Awards valued at $15,000 were offered to out-of-state students (40 percent accepted). Sullivan said no students will lose financial aid because of the legal review; all prior contracts will be honored.
By March, U-M had begun awarding the two new scholarships:
The Michigan Tradition Award is worth $10,000 a year for four years and is awarded to students from "underrepresented high schools and neighborhood clusters,'' areas that may be disadvantaged and traditionally do not send many students to U-M. Eligible students must be the first in their family to go to college, or come from a single-parent household, or come from a family earning an income of less than $50,000.
The Michigan Experience Award is worth $10,000 each year for four years and is given to students who participated in state or federal early-awareness or college-readiness programs typically based on socioeconomic status, such as Upward Bound, Talent Search and Gear-up।
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