Gates Scholarships Will No Longer Be Restricted To Minority Students
The Gates Foundation has announced it will no longer limit eligibility for its prestigious ... More scholarship to minority students,
The Gates Foundation will no longer restrict eligibility for its prestigious Gates Scholarships to minority students.
The surprise decision came just two weeks after the American Alliance for Equal Rights, led by conservative activist attorney Ed Blum, had filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service urging it to investigate the legality of the Gates Foundation's and two other foundations' tax-exempt status.
That complaint 'alleged that the scholarship's restriction constituted invidious racial discrimination in violation of federal law, IRS regulations and longstanding Supreme Court precedent,' according to Blum in his opinion piece in the April 13 Wall Street Journal.
According to the Gates website, the awards have been a 'highly selective, last-dollar scholarship for outstanding, minority, high school seniors from low-income households.' The following criteria were listed:
Additionally, recipients had to plan to enroll full-time, in a four-year degree program, at a US accredited, not-for-profit, private or public college or university.
However, in a new statement added to its webpage, the Foundation indicates it has changed those requirements. 'The Gates Foundation's mission is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life,' the statement begins.
It then adds, 'we take our compliance obligations seriously to ensure we can operate in service of this mission. In September 2024, we began evaluating our Gates Scholarship program to ensure the program was reaching the broadest range of low-income students. It has been decided to expand eligibility to all Pell Grant-eligible students in order to achieve this goal. In the future, Gates Scholarship recipients will be selected through the expanded eligibility criteria.'
The Gates Scholarships were established in 2017, as a successor to the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program. Since then, about 300 scholarships have been awarded annually. The awards cover the full cost of college attendance — tuition, fees, room and board, transportation, and books — up to the amount that's not paid by other financial aid and an expected family contribution.
Blum said the Foundation's amended criteria had 'seismic implications," adding that it 'didn't wait for the IRS to bring an administrative action questioning its tax-exempt status. It blinked—and implicitly conceded a fundamental legal point: Race-based exclusions are incompatible with the privilege of federal tax exemption.'
He described the Foundation's changed requirements as 'commendable but reactive. A more proactive, systemic approach is required. The IRS should issue clear guidance that makes explicit what the law and precedent already command: tax-exempt status is a privilege conditioned on colorblind nondiscrimination, not a shield for racial engineering, however well-intended it purports to be.'
On January 21, President Donald Trump issued an executive order 'Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Base Opportunity' terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government and ordering federal agencies to investigate 'publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars' for their civil rights compliance.
Since then, several statues, scores of universities, and numerous private organizations have announced they have ended a wide range of programs intended to benefit ethnic and racial minorities.
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