Federal budget cuts lead to fewer scholarships for students

More than 200 students in the state of Mississippi will have to find new ways to help pay for college. On April 14, the U.S. Congress passed legislation concerning the national budget. Several programs did not receive the funding they needed to continue operations, including the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship. 

The program awarded freshmen who plan on pursuing post-secondary education after high school graduation. The scholarship program is named after the Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the longest serving senator in U.S. history, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to until his death in 2010.

Robert C. Byrd Scholars are chosen from each of the 435 United States congressional districts. The merit-based scholarship began in 1985 as a one-time scholarship, but since 1993, the selected students receive $1,500 annually over four years.

The program is funded by the federal government through the Department of Education. The department distributes funds to state education departments, who then administer the scholarships to the Byrd Scholars of the congressional districts of the state. 

In 2010, the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship Program awarded 28,000 scholarships totaling $42 milliom for college students in the U.S. One Ole Miss Byrd Scholar, Jarrod Hatton, a sophomore physics and philosophy double major from Walnut, was informed through an email this month that no more Byrd scholarships would be awarded to any students in the state. 

Hatton applied for the scholarship when he was a senior in high school and believed that he would continue to receive the scholarship for four years. 

“I thought it was about the reapplication process that you do every summer,” Hatton said about the email. “I continued to read the message and found out that they had cut funding so I wasn’t getting any money at all.”

Hatton and his fellow Byrd Scholars have been communicating through Facebook and brainstorming ideas of how to take action. 

“Other students I have met have a Facebook message going out about getting the scholarships reinstated,” he said.

Currently, students are considering calling, emailing and writing their senators and representatives in Washington, D.C., about how the unexpected loss of scholarship will affect how they will pay for college.

“I will have to take out more dollars in loans,” Hatton said. “But luckily I have other scholarships so I won’t take that much of a hit.”

Tony Webster of the Mississippi Department of Education said that when parents and students call asking what they can do about the loss of the scholarship, he tells them that they can contact their representative or senators in Washington, D.C. Webster adds that the program has not been officially eliminated but without funding, thousands of students in the U.S. will not receive the Robert C. Byrd Scholarship for the upcoming academic year.