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With a budget of little more than half a million dollars in aid for first-year students (first-aid?) the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law has promised incoming students of about more than $3 million in scholarships – provided they remain in the law school. According to university spokesman Mark Herbert, it was a mistake by the school’s admissions director who resigned on Monday. Now, the law school is left to pay about $2.4 million more in scholarship money than it could have afforded over the next three years.
Panic reaction over the drastic drop in applicants for law school across the country?
However, according to the spokesman of the school, the law school intends to make good the offers because, “it is the right thing to do,” but there is another side to the story. If the Brandeis School of Law cannot make up for the shortfall of about $2.4 million over the next three years, then, according to the school spokesperson, cuts may be required in other programs or to the scholarships offered to incoming students next year.
Burt Deutsch, vice chairman of the University of Louisville Foundation, the fundraising arm of the university, said, “The important thing is that the university is going to maintain its pledges to students … Obviously somebody made a mistake and the people who shouldn’t suffer are students who accepted an offer of financial assistance in good faith.”
Herbert also confirmed the news that Brandon Hamilton, the law schools assistant dean for admissions had resigned on Monday. Declining to make further insightful comments he said, “All we can say is that he resigned and we are looking into it … At this time, we do not know of any criminal conduct but we are reviewing the entire matter and seeing where it takes us.”
Hamilton had been working in the university for the last ten years and had been at the law school for the last four years. It is not impossible that the sudden drop in law school applicants and upheavals in the law students’ market led to panic reactions.
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According to the school spokesman, 108 of the 140 incoming students were eligible for financial aid and about “two-thirds to three-quarters of them” either received more than what they should have, or received aid they should not have received. The average situation is that a student supposed to get $4000 a year in aid landed up with a real grant of $10,000 a year.
However, none of the students was aware that he/she was being promised more than what he/she was eligible to receive, confirmed Herbert.
