DURING the school year of 1927-1928, at the instance of the board of deans, the regents authorized one hundred "Tuition Scholarships," to be distributed among the vari-ous colleges proportionately to their relative enrollments. Allocation has been made according to the following table, although not all of the awards have been made:
Agriculture ............................... 8
Arts and Science.......................... 19
Business Administration................... 12
Engineering .............................. 10
Dentistry ................................. 1
Fine Arts ................................. 8
General ................................... 4
Journalism ................................ 2
Medicine ..........................…....... 4
Pharmacy .................................. 2
Teachers ................................. 21
Pre-dentistry ............................. 1
Pre-law ................................... 4
Pre-medicine................................3
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The basis of the award is to include scholastic standing and economic need. The matter is to be administered in a way to encourage the continuance in school of students capable of superior work, but who may be under the necessity of letting outside work seriously interfere with their school duties.
The scholarships cover only the course tuition fees of one and one-half dollars per credit-hour for recita-tion courses and two and one-half dollars per credit-hour for laboratory courses. In the College of Engi-neering, the grant amounts to $35.00 to $40.00 per semester, and constitutes a distinctly helpful item in the personal budget of the average student.
It will be noted that there are ten scholarships avail-able to engineering students. This year, we had thirty-one applications filed early enough to receive consideration, and a few after the recommendations were decided upon. While considerable dissimilarity occurs in the statistical data of the several applications, with possibly two or three exceptions they all repre-sent very worthy cases. Necessarily, some deserving applicants had to be denied assistance, because of our numerical limitations.
First, taking the group as a whole, we find that thirteen of the thirty-one applicants were wholly self-supporting, and some of these carried the additional burden of aid to others. The average number of hours of credit already secured was 60, with a maximum of 133 hours and a minimum of 20 hours, hours There were three freshmen, nine sophomores, twelve juniors and seven seniors.
The average grade was 83.65%, with a maximum of 93.3% and a minimum of 71.5% In fact, there were four students who had general averages above 90%, which is a pretty high figure for an engineering course.
The faculty committee which made the selections had a difficult task. As gen-eral conditions, however, it determined to give weight to scholarship record, financial condition, character, personality, and advancement in the course. No one of these items was to be decisive in itself. A high-grade man would outrank one of lower standing. An upper-classman would be given preference over a lower-classman. It is impracticable to work this out on a mathematical basis, and decision involves the weighing and judging of several items.
The ten students finally chosen for these first scholarships include five juniors and five seniors. Their average standing is 86.1% for an average credit of 83.2 hours. They are now carrying class schedules averaging 14.2 hours, and all except one man are still doing some outside work. We hope to see even these good grades improved as a result of the slight lessening of the financial stress upon the men.
In later selections, we shall expect to find sopho-mores and freshmen among the recipients, for we know of many in these classes whose grades, whose application, whose determination, and whose ambition easily place them in the eligible list.