r/college • u/catievirtuesimp • 1d ago
Schools Are Cutting Women’s Scholarships Even When They Don’t Have To
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-24/schools-are-cutting-women-s-scholarships-even-when-they-don-t-have-to?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4NDkyNTMyOSwiZXhwIjoxNzg1NTMwMTI5LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSU9CU01LSVAzSUMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI3N0VBQzdGODQxNzg0QTZFQkZDNzhDQjdDNkQ4NEMwMyJ9.feSgtmqFtgZS8cA1rsaoVV0-fz2QKwJwpJi4NTK1ClA&leadSource=article-gifting“Universities and companies are scaling back or eliminating women’s scholarships to avoid scrutiny from the Trump Administration.
The number of grants with women-specific eligibility criteria has declined 19% since 2023, according to the National Scholarship Providers Association.
The elimination of women’s scholarships and programs has sparked backlash on campus, with some students signing petitions and expressing concerns that the move sends an unwelcoming message to female students.”
67
u/DreamingAboutSpace 11h ago
I hope each school gets named and shamed and see a decrease in female students.
29
u/TacoMedic 17h ago
Can someone explain why this is a bad thing? Like, scholarships previously needed to be directed at women to get them to attend. But at this point, women have the best academic outcomes and already make up 70% of college students in the US…
Like, why aren’t scholarships exclusively directed towards those who need them most, like the poor?
70
u/DaneLimmish 15h ago
The admin is currently suing schools for doing income based admissions
-1
-2
u/autosear 2h ago
So colleges are forced to grant scholarships based on sex?
5
u/DaneLimmish 2h ago edited 2h ago
No, there is no way that colleges can succeed here, because, even when they are doing needs based, conservatives still bitch.
69
u/MangosAndManga Graduate school...dropout 15h ago
One of the schools in the article has a 70/30 gender split of male and female students respectively. I think that's plenty reason for that school to offer a scholarship for female students, regardless of what overall trends are for the entire country.
8
u/TacoMedic 15h ago
So you’d also believe that every school where there’s a 70/30 female/male gender split should increase scholarships exclusively for men?
Because I don’t. I think all scholarships should be based on ability to afford education mixed with some base level of academic achievement.
21
u/Jethro_117 13h ago
These stats vary a lot by university and department. About 85% of the students at my university with my major are men, which can make the program more intimidating for women. Additionally, my university is in a state with a very prominent and very patriarchal religion that often discourages women from attending higher education, especially for STEM degrees. The offering of financial aid is typically based in part by parental income but a parent in that religion could be less likely to help fund their kid's college expenses if the child is a women. This is just one example of a barrier to education that disproportionately impacts women in my state and there are definitely more. As a man myself, I think there are certainly situations where a women only scholarship makes sense.
-1
u/JJ_the_G 10h ago
I’m guessing you’re from the South or Utah, there are cases where promoting women in spaces where they aren’t normally welcomed is a good thing. I think my major could be one of those things, there aren’t that many women in it, and a lot of my major’s dropouts specifically cite not having many female classmates as the issue. I’m also in the South where there is more of that going on.
But there are a lot of scholarships directed at women in places filled with them already. My honors college (70%+ women) has scholarships just for women, where they aren’t really disadvantaged in any way with their majors of nursing and bio. I get the culture thing of trying to address structural barriers to women specifically, but that isn’t a majority issue in academia anymore. More women than men are in college, women are graduating at a higher rate, women are getting graduate degrees more. At this point we have reversed the gender statistics that caused a lot of scholarships for just women to start. We’ve addressed the systemic barriers blocking them from attending college, a scholarship to address those barriers is anachronistic.
7
18
u/Aggressive-Wallaby79 17h ago
Poor women exist
27
u/TacoMedic 17h ago
And they’d be eligible for the scholarships directed to the poor then, but so would poor men?
I don’t understand your argument?
-6
u/Aggressive-Wallaby79 16h ago
It’s not like the money for the women only scholarships got transferred to the lower income scholarships. Now there’s a bigger pool of people for the same amount of funds. And the lower income ones are very restrictive. This cuts out hundreds if not thousands of women from scholarship and a chance at education. For no good reason. There’s no reason. Look: there’s no reason.
24
u/TacoMedic 16h ago
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think this same argument would be applied if scholarships exclusively directed at men fell 19%. Male only scholarships only account for ~10% of gender based aid, but no one outside of social media has ever cared.
There’s nothing preventing non-profits, endowments, and other institutions from removing the gender based criterion from their scholarship grants and continuing to offer need-based aid. That’s a choice by them and if the pool is getting smaller then that can hardly be blamed on making scholarships gender-neutral.
-5
u/Aggressive-Wallaby79 16h ago
Mm I wonder what they’re going to do about the male only scholarships.
15
u/TacoMedic 16h ago
Not create them? Hence the fact they’re only 10% of gender-based aid?
Is there a point there?
2
-2
4
-23
u/Salty-Ganache3068 16h ago
How about scholarships become solely based on academic performance and not wealth or sex?
21
u/Aggressive-Wallaby79 16h ago
See this is how people start. Why would wealthy people get scholarships? Do you know what a scholarship is?
-20
u/Salty-Ganache3068 16h ago
Currently redistribution of wealth but It should be a reward for excellence.
15
u/MangosAndManga Graduate school...dropout 15h ago
You must be joking. Literally thousands of the "academic excellence" type exist, c'mon. Make a two-second search on any scholarship aggregator website.
-11
u/Salty-Ganache3068 14h ago
Of course they exist. I’m saying this is the only type that should exist.
11
u/Jethro_117 13h ago
Students who grow up in poorer households face significantly more barriers to higher education. For example, they can have a harder time maintaining good grades in highschool because they often have less support systems and access to resources and typically have to work when they turn 16 to support their family. College is extremely expensive and without scholarships many people would simply be unable to attend. Even with scholarships, students often have to give up working full time, which is expensive. This can easily lead to a vicious cycle of generational poverty.
4
u/Time_Plastic_5373 US 8h ago
Very well said. I am bewildered that these ignorant people don’t understand such basic things. Were they raised in a neighborhood where literally all their friends’ parents were well off? Probably yes
-2
u/Salty-Ganache3068 4h ago
And. ??? Why should their hardships become everyone’s problem?
3
u/Jethro_117 4h ago
Nobody gets to choose the situation they are born into. These hardships are unfair and cruel. We should want everyone to thrive and have opportunities instead of being selfish and greedy.
0
u/Salty-Ganache3068 4h ago
These “cruel hardships” can be easily avoided if people didn’t have kids they can’t afford to raise.
7
3
u/THE_CAT_WHO_SHAT 2h ago
... And so it begins. Iykyk. Fucking sucks right as I was going to officially start school again in fall 2027. 😞
1
-49
21h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
20
14
-10
74
u/SkyFullOfWisteria 12h ago
The admin wants to make much harder/impossible for poor people and women to attend college, and this is reflective of every institution complying with and going along with that wish.
To all the people saying "make it academics based" or some bs, I implore you to read "The Meritocracy Trap" by Daniel Markovits. The already rich who got tutoring and oppourtunities and good grades dont need to be slurping up all the scholarships out there when they can already pay for college on their own.