Student Union
Students Given Full Scholarships Told It Was a Mistake
For many international students, being accepted to school in the U.S. and getting a full scholarship is like winning the lottery.
Maybe better.
"It is my sincerest honor to congratulate you on earning the Presidential Fellow scholarship," wrote Michael Tidwell, president of University of Texas-Tyler, to 100 scholars in Nepal in December. "This means our university and hopefully your new home for the next four years is taking care of tuition, fees, housing, meal plan, and books!
"Yes, I'm serious!"
Apparently, not really. A few months later, UT-Tyler rescinded most of the full-ride scholarships, saying that "due to extraordinary demand for this year's Fellows program, our scholarship requests exceeded the amount budgeted for this year.
"As a result, funds for the Presidential Fellows program are no longer available, and we will not be able to offer you the Presidential Fellows scholarship. We initially thought we could include you as a Fellow this year, but the popularity of the program was far greater than expected."
Ouch. Not only was this a financial issue, but this kind of news so late in the acceptance cycle has left the students with few options.
"I feel very sad," honors student Roshan Poudel told VOA. "I feel depressed. I was making plans."
When he first received his acceptance letter, it took a minute for him to appreciate the enormity of the scholarship offer, he said.
"You have until March 1" to pay a $100 deposit to confirm, the university wrote, which Poudel paid promptly. An email February 1 with the word "APPROVED" in big letters arrived, confirming his deposit. Roommates were assigned and their names were sent to him. Another email arrived March 29, inviting Poudel to the honors program and asking him to mark his calendar for an orientation session.
But Friday, April 13, came an email marked, "URGENT: Please read ... "
The university had erred and was offering a far lesser scholarship, called the Patriot, worth $5,000. The university also offered Poudel and other Nepalese students in-state tuition of $17,000 a year.
The email could not have been more stunning. While Poudel comes from Pokhara, a beautiful city on Phewa Lake in central Nepal, his father earns $500 a month. His mother "cried when I got the scholarship, and she cried when I got the scholarship revoked." She wants him to stay in Nepal now, not trusting the U.S. will take proper care of her son.
"We had a perfect storm of things," said Lucas Roebuck, UTT chief communications officer. "We were completely unprepared. ... The idea that hundreds of people would apply was new to us. ... It was a SNAFU." SNAFU is shorthand for a situation that has been fouled up.
More than 1 million international students are studying in the U.S., with nearly half of them coming from China and India. In the past few years, Nepal — a small country of 30 million people living among the peaks of the Himalaya mountains — sent more than 11,000 students from Chitwan, Humla, Pokhara, Jhapa, Nawalparasi, Bara, Dang and other places to study in the U.S.
Roebuck explained that UTT had made offers to about 100 scholars from Nepal, upping the Nepalese representation at his school from 10 Nepalese undergrads and 20 graduate students. UTT expected what is known as "melt," or some international students not accepting the offer in favor of other schools or programs.
But that didn't happen. And the budget did not allow for all those who accepted. So UTT made the cuts, leaving around 30 accepted full-ride students with far lesser offers than what had been announced months earlier. Roebuck said the school understands the students' anguish.
"I didn't initially believe the news that UT Tyler had canceled scholarships," Joan Liu — adviser at United World College (a high school) in Singapore — wrote to VOA in an email. "In my 20 years in admission, I have never seen a U.S. institution do this. It was beyond my comprehension."
Liu described the situation for the students as "complicated and chaotic."
"They are not American students. If they were, they could file a lawsuit and there could be litigation," she wrote. "UT Tyler put them in a situation where there was detrimental reliance on a scholarship they did not deliver."
Poudel and other students orphaned by the foul up took their case to social media and have asked UTT to make good on their original offer. Advisers and schools have reached out, trying to find a spaces and scholarships for the remaining 32 students whom UTT could not admit.
The University of Akron, College of Idaho, Robert Morris University, State University of New York, Drake University, Northwestern University, Eastern New Mexico University have all stepped up to the plate to offer help to the students. Other schools that have offered assistance to the Nepalese are Lynn University, University of Denver, Texas Christian University, University of Rochester, Western Illinois University, and, Ashoka University in India.
Poudel says he will likely take a slot with a SUNY campus in South Korea.
While Poudel, who describes himself as "a constant learner" on his Twitter page, is disappointed, he is also gracious about the experience.
"I have learned some lessons. But this has made me a better person," he said. "In a sense, I am thankful to UT Tyler."
Adviser Liu was less sanguine.
"This is a shame, an absolute shame, because these kids are extremely high-achieving students. You can imagine what a turnaround this is for a teenager who has been aspiring to come to the U.S. for several years," she wrote.
VOA's David Byrd contributed to this report. This story was updated to include schools offering assistance.
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At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
