I saw an old article from February 2017 that Iowa cut back on their scholarships program. This seems like a really bad PR move to stop scholarships to students in their 2nd-4th years. Considering the amount of money Iowa needed to save ($8 million was it?) it seems petty for the administration to punish those students.
So my question is regarding the scholarship programs for Fall 2018. Will there be any scholarships? And why should my daughter choose Iowa even if they commit to a scholarship her freshmen year? How can I trust that it won’t be offered a year or two down the road? We are out of state and could not afford paying tuition without that scholarship.
Yeah, this was really awful. Almost 2,500 in-state students had their scholarships revoked. This was a university decision to cut aid that had already been promised, in response to state budget cuts. Even with the awful budget mess in Illinois, UIUC didn’t cut existing awards that I know. It’s one thing to cut back on making new scholarship offers to balance the budget, but really questionable not to honor those already granted. It does appear some or all of these awards were re-instated, possibly in response to a lawsuit.
My child was accepted to Iowa last month and received the Old Gold merit scholarship for out of state students. So, yes, scholarships are being awarded, but the fine print at the bottom says, “In the event there are reductions in state funding for the University of Iowa, support for institutional scholarships and grants may be impacted. If that happens, awards may be reduced accordingly within the academic year.” Apparently, this is new wording that was not present on award letters in previous years.
Without the ability to trust the scholarship will be awarded every year, the cost is enough that other offers will most likely be better, even though Iowa is one of the top choices right now otherwise. On the other hand, if you are out-of-state, consider that the difference between residents and non-residents is almost $22,000. So if you have a non-resident award for under $20K, they are still making more money on you than resident tuition, so maybe it’s less likely for smaller non-resident awards to be cut?