It appears that unclaimed scholarships may be coming from endowments, especially to cities which are helping high school graduates pay for their college education.
Apparently; its a new occurrence that is starting to happen more frequently in cities for public schools, which is helping students strive for their passions by financially helping them to afford the high cost of attending college. They can now afford to go, whereas before they could not afford it.
Communities are making a really big bold statement and are now leveraging what they can do by being very entrepreneurial from a grass roots level by working with outside business’s on setting up educational endowments for high school graduating students.
Your starting to see outside foundations who have been partnering with cities and school districts to get into the scholarship game of providing those unclaimed scholarships to students who need the help of continuing their education past the high school level.
Their is an expansion happening at the local level to accomplish this since the policy level takes so much longer to happen waiting for these types of educational offerings getting passed at state or national levels.
Charter school’s all over now in cities are starting to formulate relationships setting up and acquiring these endowments with profit and non-profit entities.
Normally, endowments are more common at college preparatory and elite private high schools. Many times when public schools set up endowment funds on their own, they go to paying for things such as field trips, school needed maintenance or extracurricular activities.
Now, there is a shift of thinking on this, and more public schools are copying the stereotypical Promise Scholarship model. For example; in Kalamazoo Michigan, this format (Promise Scholarship) provides college scholarships to any high school graduate of a Kalamazoo high school; as long as they attend a college or university in the state of Michigan. As it stands now there are more then 60 cities across the country that now have Promise programs.
The only difference is that the Unclaimed Endowment scholarships now being offered by many public charter schools, can be used for any college the student choose’s to attend.
They do not have to stay in their state or region to be awarded monies for college. It’s also a last-dollar scholarship. This means it covers any remaining expenses students have, such as books, room and board which is left unpaid; after other financial aid is taken into account.
Endowment Unclaimed Scholarships Criticized
Many people, including those analysts who study high rising college cost, criticize plans that subsidize the cost of college. They would rather have efforts focused on getting to the root problem of the business model of higher education that has caused costs to skyrocket.
But it’s very clear many communities feel they cannot sit and wait for some type of change to come from somewhere else; because it may never come at all.
Example of Endowment Scholarship
Peak to Peak is a charter school in Colorado has an Endowment scholarship program to ensure students with financial need to get into college, as well as finish college with a four-year scholarship.
Peak to Peak received a $1 million donation and was able to create an endowment to permanently put in place their unclaimed scholarship. There was a total of (6) students from the graduating class of 2014 who were awarded scholarships from their pilot program.
The struggle to make college affordable for all students has caught the attention of schools & communities, along with politicians nationwide. The Endowment college scholarship funds are one way to instill a college paying program that actually works – if set up and run properly.
It’s one of the best unclaimed scholarship programs today, and students looking for help in paying for their education should start to immediately look into all types of educational Endowments and apply to them.
These Endowments don’t have to come from charter schools, but can come directly from the place who funds the Endowment. This is an ideal way to find unclaimed college scholarships.