How Central Scholarship is building partnerships to restrict scholarship award displacement

Let’s face it. Student financial aid is complicated and we all just want to figure out the best way to help students complete their higher education without crippling student debt. Years ago we got wind of a practice known as scholarship award  displacement. If you have never heard of that before, don’t worry, we hadn’t either. Here’s the definition:

Scholarship Award Displacement: Occurs when receipt of one form of student financial aid, such as a Central Scholarship private scholarship, leads to a reduction in other forms of student financial aid, such as institutional scholarships.

Essentially, Central Scholarship recipients who received great grades, did their own scholarship research, wrote beautiful application essays, made it through interviews, and finally received a Central Scholarship private scholarship, could have their institutional scholarships reduced as a result.  This could happen because a student is required by law to report all private scholarships to their university, so if a student received $5,000 from Central Scholarship, their university scholarship could be reduced by $5,000. It’s a wash for the student. We felt compelled to speak up about this issue, but through this process we could never have imagined the leadership public and private educational institutions in Maryland would show.

Public Institutions: Our first milestone was in 2017, when Maryland passed statewide legislation to restrict scholarship award displacement at four-year public institutions. Students who earn private scholarships will no longer have their institutional scholarships reduced at Maryland’s four-year public colleges and universities, which are:

Bowie State University

Coppin State University

Frostburg State University

Morgan State University

Salisbury University

St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Towson University

University of Baltimore

University of Maryland Eastern Shore

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Maryland University College

Private Institutions: Then, in November 2018, private Maryland educational institutions stepped up in a big way and took the bold step of restricting award displacement for Central Scholarship and CollegeBound Foundation scholarships. We are so proud to work with private Maryland institutions who did not hesitate to commit to such an initiative. It’s an honor to partner with:

Capital Technology University

Goucher College

Hood College

Johns Hopkins University

Loyola University of Maryland

Maryland Institute College of Art

McDaniel College

Mount St. Mary’s University

Notre Dame of Maryland University

St. John’s College

Stevenson University

Washington Adventist University

Washington College