Leaders at Marshall and West Virginia universities say they still hope to be compensated by the state for Promise Scholarship money they didn’t receive last year.
Leaders of the schools said they had to use the colleges’ own reserves to make sure students received the scholarship money the state usually provides.
“We were asked not to really discuss that until after the election, which we did. We decided we would stay quiet about it,” Marshall University President Jerome Gilbert told state Senator Robert Plymale, D-Wayne, during a budget hearing today.
“So we have sat and waited and now we have come forward to let you know this happened. And we are requesting that we get those state funds that we promised the students that we had to take out of our reserves to actually fund their scholarships.”
Gilbert said the university is reimbursed for Promise Scholarship money in four installments. But when the state faced a shortfall of a little more than $5 million, he said, the universities had to help fill the gap
“We were delivered a big blow last spring, the spring of 2020, when we failed to receive $1.13 million in Promise funds for our Marshall students,” Gilbert told senators.
Of Marshall’s 1,900 students on Promise Scholarships, Gilbert said, the amount would have paid for 236 of those.
“Rather than not give the Promise Scholarship money to our students that had been awarded by the state, we used money from our own reserves to fund the shortfall.”
Gilbert continued, “We now respectfully request that the Legislature restore the Promise Scholarship funds that we were denied.”
The presidents of Marshall and WVU were testifying about their financial situations before the Senate Finance Committee. Each said the past year has brought enormous challenges, both in trying to assure health during the pandemic and in terms of finances.
West Virginia University made up for $2.4 million in Promise Scholarship money it didn’t receive from the state, said President Gordon Gee and Vice President Rob Alsop.
“The way we look at it, there were about 500 Promise scholars that we covered the appropriation on behalf of the State of West Virginia,” Alsop said. “The students never knew the difference.”
Alsop added, “We would welcome an appropriation that would help take care of that for WVU and for Marshall.”
Alsop said about half the Promise Scholars in the state attend West Virginia University.
Altogether, West Virginia University, Marshall University and Bethany College have not received more than $3.5 million related to the scholarship program, which goes toward tuition and mandatory fees at West Virginia institutions.
The Promise Scholarship is supported by the state’s general revenue and excess lottery revenue funds. Casinos were closed between late March 2020 and June 2020 because of the pandemic, affecting the money that usually would go into the excess lottery revenue account.
“At that point in time, we were short $5.65 million in PROMISE,” higher education Chancellor Sarah Armstrong Tucker told lawmakers earlier this week.