February 10, 2025
UMaine's Student Newspaper since 1875.
The University of Maine is not properly utilizing scholarship funds gifted by donors. Money that should be making impacts on students’ financial situations is being used to relieve the school’s responsibility for their own financial commitments to students.
The Financial Aid Office has been known to do what’s called a Swap or a Transfer of Funds. This involves the office taking scholarship money given to them by donors and giving it to students while subtracting that same amount from their financial aid given to them by the school. This scholarship has a net-zero impact on the student. They’re told they received a scholarship that they might not have applied for and then they open their bill to find out this money actually did nothing. It was a transfer of funds. The school took the money given by donors and used it to replace the money they had already given to the student.
I’ve experienced this same phenomenon two years in a row. I received an email about a scholarship and I found out that it wasn’t actually benefiting me at all. It took the help of an advisor to even figure out what had happened. I was confused as to why I got an email about a scholarship that I didn’t remember applying for. To make it even worse, I received multiple communications from the office requesting me to write a thank you note and to speak about the personal impact the scholarship had on my financial situation. This means I either have to ignore these emails or lie to the donor about the impact the scholarship had on me. In actuality, this scholarship did nothing for me.
While I’d love to be able to say that this helped reduce my financial burden, this scholarship has a net-zero impact on me. I don’t, in practice, see that money at all. That money makes no difference in my account because the school simply cuts back their own aid by the same amount. Financial aid is a privilege, and I don’t take for granted that the school helps financially support my ability to go here and that it can be revoked at any time. However, once the money is on my account, I’d like for it to stay there unless I do something to warrant it being taken away. To give out a “fake” scholarship is almost insulting.
This habit is equally troubling from a donor perspective. I would be rather upset if I were to donate money into a scholarship fund, especially one tied to a cause I believe deeply in, just to find out that the money is being distributed randomly to students who didn’t apply for the sake of cutting back their aid. Donors often aren’t even aware of when this is happening. They assume that the money they’re putting in is having a positive impact on students’ lives where the reality might be rather that the money isn’t serving any tangible purpose for them.
The school needs to be more transparent about this process to both donors and students alike. Students should also take advantage of the fact that they might be able to apply to these scholarships and get an actual tangible reward from it. However, this isn’t always the case because some scholarships are used solely for this purpose and do not actually exist on the school’s ScholarshipUniverse platform.
Published in Op-eds and Opinion
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UMaine's Student Newspaper since 1875.
