Universities around the country have begun to open up scholarship and financial aid opportunities, originally intended for ethnic minorities and women, to students of any race and gender. UW-Madison, however, has not yet followed suit.Since two 2003 Supreme Court cases dealing with race as a criterion for admission at the University of Michigan, many schools have changed their affirmative action policies to avoid legal challenges. Universities, including the State University of New York system and Southern Illinois University, are not only opening financial opportunities at the collegiate level, but also in the areas of high school enrichment programs and graduate student fellowships. Susan Fischer, director of financial aid at UW-Madison, said she does not anticipate any changes. We haven't been challenged at this point in time,\ she said. ""I don't know why we would change unless we absolutely have to.""Fischer does not believe any scholarships will be changed because most scholarships given out by UW-Madison are donation-funded or controlled by
individual university departments. The state of Wisconsin contributes little to UW-Madison's scholarship program as a whole, according to Fischer. Wisconsin, she said, is ""a frugal little state"" and the Office of Student Financial Services is working to obtain more state financial aid support. Out of 15 scholarships designated for or that give special consideration to minority UW-Madison students, only the Lawton Grant is state-funded. Since private funds make up most of the scholarships, the state has little to no input on scholarship money distribution, according to Fischer. ""There are a lot of different scholarships for different reasons … from different sources of money,"" said Pam Oliver, the chairperson of the Sociology Department. ""If the money is from a private donor who wants it to be restricted to a certain minority group, it's a different situation.""Oliver said she believes scholarships aimed at minorities can add to the diversity of the UW-Madison campus. She described the UW-Madison campus as culturally homogeneous and said that financial aid is a good incentive to attract historically disadvantaged groups. ""There are lots of different things that campuses want to attract, precisely people with different abilities that are not all the same,"" Oliver said, adding that cultural diversity is one of those attractive factors to universities.Neither Oliver nor Fischer was able to predict the consequences of allowing majority students to have access to scholarships intended for minorities. Yet, for now, according to Fischer, there is no talk of changing student access, to scholarship funds.
—The New York Times contributed to this report\
