Financial literacy empowers students to understand how money works and make wise choices with it, building savings accounts and developing healthy relationships with it beyond college.
Scholarship terms and conditions may include eligibility requirements such as minimum credit hours or academic standards or continuous enrollment requirements, while also outlining whether students can take breaks or leaves of absence. A contract between parties involved can provide clarity over this aspect of student participation in scholarship programs.
Creating a Scholarship Contract
College students face an array of complex financial aid options that may be unclear to them, leading them to make poor choices such as taking on too much debt or failing to utilize all available resources. Financial literacy programs can make higher education more accessible by equipping students with skills needed to understand their options and make informed financial decisions.
Scholarship contracts are one of the cornerstones of financial aid literacy education, detailing all of the terms and conditions that must be fulfilled for a student to continue receiving scholarship funds.
Contract terms depend on the terms under which a scholarship was granted; however, certain elements should always be included in any such agreement.
Contracts should outline both the amount and duration of a scholarship award clearly so both students and donors are clear on what their responsibilities are. Furthermore, it’s wise to include details regarding disbursement (i.e. directly to student or applied to their account at school) as well as requirements the recipient must fulfill to continue receiving funding.
If your scholarship is awarded on the basis of financial need, it’s also essential that the recipient report any changes in their situation as this allows your organization to tailor the aid package appropriately and prevents students from receiving more than their calculated financial need.
Finally, both students and scholarship providers must sign the contract to enforce it legally and validly. A professional eSignature solution such as airSlate SignNow ensures this takes place effectively while meeting compliance guidelines such as ESIGN, UETA, and eIDAS for electronic signatures. You should send this contract along with your scholarship offer letter so recipients can sign and return it prior to receiving funds disbursements.
Getting Recipients to Read the Contract
Many have come across the phrase, “Terms and Conditions Apply”, when applying for credit cards, using online services, or buying products. While these conditions exist to protect offerors against legal and financial risk, they’re also used as an effective way of making sure products or services meet provider goals – such as providing scholarships. Colleges and nonprofits in particular should ensure their scholarships make an impactful impactful statement regarding requirements to students, helping ensure maximum returns on scholarship investment funds.
No matter the purpose of your scholarship program – academic excellence, outstanding athletic ability or demonstrating commitment to their field – creating a financial literacy initiative is of vital importance. These programs help students complete financial aid applications successfully while finding suitable loans tailored to meet individual needs and manage any associated student loan debt effectively.
Scholarship awards generally contain terms and conditions that are detailed in an award letter sent directly to a selected student. These could include criteria such as who qualifies, the criteria used to select recipients and any additional requirements that may be important to achieving its purpose.
As an example, you might need to ensure students are taking their coursework seriously by setting minimum GPA or credit requirements per semester. Furthermore, to prevent unnecessary spending of scholarship funds on study-abroad programs or summer classes.
Once your contract is in place, share it with scholarship recipients along with their offer letters and have them sign and return it – be sure they keep a copy for reference! Also share it with any departments at your organization that might have an interest such as finance and accounting to check that it complies with organizational policies and laws as well as have your legal counsel review it to ensure a smooth operation of the scholarship program. By taking these steps, you can ensure its smooth running.
Monitoring Recipients’ Compliance
Terms and conditions often come attached with special offers, giveaways, coupons, or any type of special event to ensure compliance with laws and protect offerors from legal or financial risk. Furthermore, people often agree to the terms before using websites, apps, software products or donating scholarship funds. Donors set conditions that ensure their scholarship funds will have maximum impact.
Offering students an informative contract to sign is key to maintaining transparency, accountability, and efficient administration of your program. Include it with your scholarship application and send selected recipients the copy alongside their offer letter; have them sign it before receiving funds, then keep a copy for future reference if contract policies change; have them resign it once policies change so they understand all requirements.
Scholarship contracts also enable students to develop budgeting skills essential to effectively managing educational finances and making sound decisions throughout their academic journeys. This is particularly helpful for low-income and first-generation college students who face an intricate web of educational finance options that may be hard for them to navigate on their own.
Students can benefit from learning about comparing financial aid offers and student loan repayment. PNW’s video portal includes webinars that address these subjects as well as others to help students understand their finances and make informed decisions. Each webinar also comes equipped with pre-test and post-test exercises designed to test student knowledge before reinforcing information presented during each presentation.
Scholarship agreements can also foster financial literacy by employing terms like “supported” versus “unsupported.” Supported refers to adding award money directly into student cost of attendance while unsupported means the grant has not been accepted by their institution – which may happen if their GPA falls below minimum SAP standards and their plan for improvement does not get accepted; otherwise they become ineligible for aid until their GPA meets these minimum SAP standards once more.
Reminders
universities should assist their students in understanding financial aid terminology and making informed decisions with the funds awarded them, including teaching them to compare and evaluate different aid offers as well as create a budget. Such knowledge is vital in order to avoid falling into debt traps which could limit future financial decisions.
Merit scholarships are one of the most attractive types of financial aid, as they reduce college costs without needing to be repaid, unlike loans. Unfortunately, however, many students do not understand their terms or how they differ from other forms of assistance; consequently they often underestimate the amount of grant support that may come their way and have unrealistic expectations regarding loan repayment terms.
Schools can combat this issue by sending targeted, behaviorally informed reminder emails to both students and parents encouraging them to submit applications. ASU took this approach during its eight weeks leading up to ASU’s priority deadline by sending weekly reminder emails to select continuing undergraduate students that emphasized the significance of filing their financial aid applications as well as encouraging discussion between parent and student regarding those applications – these increased application submission by 21 percentage points while shortening overall completion time from two weeks down to just over one month for an average cost per student of $0.15.
Remind recipients that their scholarships depend on enrollment at the university, making timely enrollment essential to keeping financial aid. In the event that a student fails to enroll on time, financial aid could be forfeited and should speak with their department and/or financial aid advisor immediately in order to resolve the situation and reinstate any scholarships that were previously lost.
As Stevens University requires a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0 after 23 earned credits to renew merit scholarships, it’s also essential that students maintain minimum academic standards set out by these scholarships. If students fail to do so, their financial aid could be suspended until they meet these minimum standards again.