Comments about ‘300 students offered UVU scholarships only to learn it was a mistake’

The article says that, after the girls received the letters awarding them scholarships, they "both paid $35 and applied to attend UVU." I wonder if the payments and applications might qualify as legal "acceptances" of the scholarship "offers," and therefore the creation of a legally enforceable contract. This would be an interesting question for a law school contracts exam.

My daughter, who had already applied to UVU,received a letter as well. I called the scholarship office the next day to verify that her applications were all complete only to be told that the scholarships hadn't been awarded yet and there would only be a few given since my daughter is a non-resident. Prospective Student Services again verified that she had the scholarship if we received a letter. The next day I got a humble phone call that the scholarships really hadn't been awarded yet. We have yet to get a retraction letter though! Mistakes happen. UVU is a great school and we are hoping some kind of scholarship comes through!

Funny when students make mistakes most of the time there is no room for forgiveness. Most of the time teachers respond "welcome to the real world" but if a school makes a mistake we are required to forgive and move on.

How about offer those students a couple of free meals to compensate for your mistake.

Oh, these types of mistakes happen all the time... Oh wait.

They paid to be considered as students. They applied to be considered as students.

I do think it's a dirty trick.

Whoops! You got a lotta splainin' to do Loocy!

Sounds pretty creepy to make that kind of mistake, then pull out the rug from under them. When we make mistakes, we have some accountability too...not just I'm sorry...too bad. Easy for the school to do nothing...not surprised.

When signing all those personal invitations for scholarship, Holland probably thought "Gee, I don't remember signing so many of these last year".

If President Holland had extended a personal signed invitation, the apology letter that would extinguish the scholarship dreams of these students should also have been personal.

When my credit union (which is much smaller than UVU) made a minor mistake (my debit card was refused at a merchant even though I had enough money in my account), the credit union sent me a $10 gift card along with their apology. I didn't even care about the error, but I imagine that having to send out gift cards for each error made them more careful.

University administrators are devoid of a conscience. This "mistake" with students is just a small example of how professors, adjuncts and other university employees are treated and mislead on a regular basis.

My son is one of the 300, I guess. As someone who works for UVU, I was pretty surprised when he got the letter, but it looked very official. My son will be very disappointed when he gets the letter saying it was a mistake -- we haven't received it yet.

When my daughter was applying for college in 2003 the same thing happened from Utah State. The difference was they offered to make good on the scholarship, since it was their mistake.

If any of these 300 students or so changed plans to attend college somewhere else, or skip some other world travel plans or something in order to prepare to go to UVU, then there are some accountability issues at stake here.