Scholarships and off-campus housing

AudraClodfelter

My organization is trying to sort out how to best handle scholarships for off-campus housing (aka paying apartment rent).

This has been a request from a few students who have explained that they've received a softball scholarship at their local community college (*with no campus housing*), but the school or coach (I'm not clear on the details here) requires them to live in the apartments next to campus. Quite frankly, this seems like an overstep, but I am not in charge of the policies of this school.

So, these students have tuition and fees covered, but have to pay roughly $5,000 in rent to play softball.

They're applying for a scholarship we recently took over from a bank that would give money directly to the students. That's not our policy. All unused funds are supposed to be returned to us and added back to the fund.

We currently have no formal policy for awarding grants for off-campus housing. We've made an exception in the last year but I'm uncomfortable with doing this without a formal policy. We're having some preliminary discussions on what the policies and procedures should be, but they won't be formalized and presented to the board before the 2021 awards are made.

Can anyone provide some guidance/best practices on this topic? I'm open to any suggestions you have about the policy and how to move forward this year.

Stay warm, and stay safe!

Audra

KaraAdams (Former Community Manager)

Thanks for sharing all the specifics on your scenario, @AudraClodfelter! Looking forward to hearing how others have handled or would handle a similar situation!