PennState University Schreyer Honor College and its students’ parents have raised $228,000 over the past year by asking merit scholarship recipients to donate unneeded portions of their $3,500 to go toward students who qualify for need-based scholarships.

In fall 2008, the college began receiving letters from various merit students who, despite the initial scholarship and state funding, were unable to pay for college or even get student loans, according to Chris Brady, dean of Schreyer Honor College.

Seeing the hardships of various students, a parent wrote a letter to other parents asking them to give back the merit scholarship or any portion they were capable of giving back.

“The appeal began when parents of current students two years ago thought, ‘We can afford this, so what can we do to help those that can’t?'” Brady said

According to Brady, there was a relatively small number of people — 17 in total — who contributed to the $228,000 they received and with that money, more than $100,000 went into an account for students. Around $124,000 went to 34 individual students, some of whom had very high need.

He added the school never directly requested students to give up their scholarships, but rather it was an initiative started by parents looking for those who do not need the merit money to contribute in some way to those who did desperately need it.

Brady said it was especially worth noting the program was initiated by parents, and the people contacted both last year and this year were pulled out a list of parents of students who did not apply for financial aid.

He added in times of economic hardship it is important to get creative in ways to help students, especially when out of only 1,700 students in the honor college there was $1.4 million of unmet need in financial aid, which they needed to find from somewhere else.

Noel Radomski, director and associate researcher at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education University of Wisconsin, said he has never heard of something occurring at UW where the school contacts scholarship recipients to return the money.

“I am not familiar with any such request in Wisconsin, yet there are new scholarship programs that have arrived here, such as the chancellor’s Madison Initiative for Undergraduates and various other programs,” Radomski said.

At WISCAPE, they continue to do research on what other financial aid opportunities will be available to people in Wisconsin, Radomski said. They are currently looking at what is going on in other parts of the United States in terms of need-based aid, rather than merit scholarships.

He added that getting creative and continuing to look for new aid opportunities is key, such as Gov. Jim Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant program, which offers scholarships to studentsif they sign a pledge agreeing to maintain a B average throughout high school, and the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars, which is a privately funded need-based scholarship.