As U of Louisville Reviews $2.4M Overbudgeting of Law Scholarships, Admissions Official Resigns
The University of Louisville’s law school budgeted $550,000 for scholarships to incoming students this academic year. But, officials say, the school actually offered first-year law students $1.3 million.
That error, multiplied by three years, is going to cost the university’s Brandeis School of Law $2.4 million over the next three years, since it is going to honor the excessive aid pledges to law students, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports in an article reprinted in USA Today.
Spokesman Mark Hebert said 108 of 140 incoming first-years were offered aid, and about “two-thirds to three-quarters” either got a scholarship offer they shouldn’t have received or got a higher aid offer than the university ordinarily would have made.
An admissions officer has resigned, and the law school is reviewing the situation. Hebert said the officer might have upped the ante on scholarship offers to try to get uncommitted law students to agree to come to the University of Louisville, the newspaper reports.
He said the excessive scholarship situation was recently discovered by interim law school dean Susan Duncan, whose appointment was announced last month.
The law school has annual budget of $8.2 million. The Courier-Journal said that the school will be able to use its endowment and “rainy day” funds to make up part of the shortfall. Burt Deutsch, vice chairman of the U of L Foundation, the university’s fundraising arm, said the foundation will try and make up the money with fundraising.
Updated at 1:52 p.m. to clarify headine and add additional information from the Courier-Journal.
