A Chicago-area philanthropist has backed out of a pledge to offer $10 million in scholarships to 1,250 low-income and first-generation school college students weeks earlier than the beginning of the autumn semester.
Former Abbott Laboratories govt Jack Schuler introduced final month that the Schuler Schooling Basis was suspending its two-decades-old Schuler Scholar Program, which gave every recipient $10,000 over 4 years ($2,500 a 12 months) in addition to grants for medical insurance and emergency assist, WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate, reported Wednesday.
To be eligible for the scholarship—and to get entry to the tutoring and counseling this system supplied—highschool college students needed to preserve a excessive grade level common, take Superior Placement programs and attend common conferences. The scholarship might solely be used to attend a choose variety of small liberal arts establishments, together with Elon College in North Carolina and Pomona Faculty in California.
However Forbes reported that dangerous investments in health-care shares fueled the monetary collapse of the Schuler Schooling Basis, in addition to Schuler’s private wealth; his web value dropped from $1.1 billion in 2021 to round $200 million earlier this 12 months.
In March, the inspiration introduced that the scholarship program was shutting down, pledging to honor present scholarship awards.
However in July, the inspiration backed out of that promise.
“It’s with a heavy coronary heart that we’ve shared some very tough information that the Schuler Scholar Program has confronted important monetary challenges and has needed to shut down its operations,” Mitchell Morgan-Dunham, this system’s director of school counseling, wrote in a July 17 e mail to college students, in accordance with Forbes. “Regardless of our greatest efforts to handle these challenges and proceed some assist for students, this system is unable to fund scholarships beforehand supplied to varsity students and highschool college students.”
Although that e mail included an apology, the scholars scrambling to determine the way to pay for faculty subsequent 12 months say it’s not sufficient.
“That doesn’t make me really feel any higher,” Marcus Jackson, a Schuler scholarship recipient who will doubtless have to get a second job if he needs to remain at Lawrence College in Wisconsin, advised WBEZ. “It doesn’t pay the payments. It undoubtedly doesn’t ship us via faculty.”
