Race-based scholarships awarded to students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education are being phased out in response to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions, according to The Hechinger Report. The Supreme Court’s decision did not address financial aid, but on the same day the ruling was released, Missouri’s attorney general ordered its state colleges to stop using race as a factor in scholarship decisions, and the University of Missouri system said it would no longer consider race or ethnicity as a factor in scholarships, Higher Ed Dive reported in June. Since then, other states have attempted to end race-based scholarships at their public colleges, leading to the cancellation of race-conscious scholarships worth at least $60 million, according to data from public universities, though the total may be significantly larger.
Colleges have taken different stances on the consideration of race and ethnicity in awarding financial aid, according to The Hechinger Report’s survey of 50 flagship public universities. At least 13 have changed or eliminated scholarships that consider race, such as the University of Iowa’s Advantage Iowa Award, which last year gave $9.4 million in scholarships to over 1,500 high-performing students from underrepresented racial backgrounds and has now transitioned to a general need-based scholarship. Another 22 schools kept race-conscious scholarships, including Pennsylvania State University, which sees the Supreme Court decision as limited to admissions only. The remaining 14 flagships either never had scholarships that considered an applicant’s race or ethnicity or have used a so-called “pool and match” system, which adheres to a donor’s request for scholarships that consider race without barring anyone from applying to those scholarships.
Impact of race-conscious scholarship
Experts fear that removing scholarships that consider an applicant’s race or ethnicity may set college financially out of reach for students from underrepresented backgrounds, including Black and Latine students. Ending those scholarships may also lead to greater financial inequalities: as it stands, Black college graduates incur more student loan debt than their white counterparts, and Black college graduates ages 25 to 34 earn 25% less than their white peers, according to The Hechinger Report, citing 2005-2022 loans and earnings data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
A National Recognition Scholarship gave Eyram Gbeddy a full ride to attend the University of Alabama. The Alabama scholarship, which was discontinued starting this fall, was previously earmarked for high-achieving Black, Latine, Indigenous, and rural students. Gbeddy, who is Black, says the scholarship not only allowed him to concentrate on his studies but also freed up family resources for his brothers’ education. Gbeddy graduated this spring, completing his degree in three years, and will attend Georgetown University Law school this fall. He says his educational journey would have been far different had he been saddled with thousands of dollars in undergraduate student debt.
“When you lose these scholarships that are targeted at Black Americans, at people from rural areas, people of Latino ancestry, you lose such a strong recruiting tool for a university that desperately needs it,” says Gbeddy. “When I sit here and I think that there are students who are just like me—who are qualified, who are smart, who would make absolutely wonderful additions to the Alabama community—who aren’t even going to be able to consider Alabama, it’s just heartbreaking to me.”