Your Scholarship: A Gift or Entitlement

Paul Alan Cox

Former Dean of General Education and Honors

Brigham Young University

Welcome to Brigham Young University. Your acceptance into BYU indicates the depth of your previous academic preparation and effort. There was intense competition for your place at BYU, but the selections committee chose you as being well-prepared to benefit from the BYU experience.

As a scholarship recipient, you are part of an even more select group of entering students. Yet I have found that some scholarship holders, despite their apparent success, secretly suffer in one of three different ways:

• Inadequacy: Some students are convinced that their scholarship is the result of a selection error. Such students maintain a low profile when they enter BYU because they believe that we must have made a mistake in offering them a scholarship. They fear that BYU will discover this mistake and withdraw their scholarship offer.
• Apprehension: Other students sense a tension between the need to take hard classes to prepare themselves well academically and the need to maintain a very high GPA in order to retain their scholarship or to be granted a new one when their current award has expired. Thus their experience at BYU is fraught with fear and they become very risk averse. Some choose the easiest way through the university, thereby avoiding many important growth opportunities.
• Indignation: A few students believe that had BYU only recognized their true brilliance, they would have granted them a far larger scholarship. They interpret the small award offered them as an affront, which they accepted only begrudgingly.

I would like to address each of these concerns in turn. The first, inadequacy, can be dealt with simply: we do not lightly make admission or scholarship decisions at BYU. Each offer of admission or scholarship is carefully considered by a diligent committee of faculty, staff, and administrators. I think you would be astonished at the care that goes into each of these decisions, for we know that we are stewards over commodities in very short supply. Perhaps the most heart-breaking duty that any of our admission officers or administration face is explaining to disappointed students, parents, and ecclesiastical leaders that there are far more worthy students than there are places at BYU. You are not an admission mistake! Your scholarship offer was not an error. We are confident of your success at BYU, and stand ready in every way to assist you.

The second concern, apprehension at losing a multi-year scholarship or fear of being unable to win a new scholarship at the termination of a one-year award is very real. The GPA required to maintain a multi-year scholarship will require a great deal of discipline and dedication to achieve. Yet the GPA required to win a new scholarship at the end of a first-year award is even higher. If you were my child and had been awarded a one-year scholarship, I would encourage you to view it exactly as that: a one-year award, designed to get your education off to a good start. I would encourage you to take demanding classes and to do your best, but to not be disappointed if you do not achieve a 3.9 or higher GPA during your freshman year. I believe that the freshman year should be a time of growth and challenge, but that it should be a happy time as well. Work hard, but please don't consider yourself a failure if you don't achieve straight A's during your first year at BYU.

The third concern, indignation because the amount of the scholarship falls short of what the student perceives is fair, requires a lengthier explanation. Unfortunately, at this time, we don't have sufficient scholarship funds to provide scholarships to all worthy students or even to those students in desperate need.

This leads me to the title of my talk: "Your Scholarship: Gift or Entitlement?" I arrived at this title after I received a telephone call from a former acquaintance in another state. He explained that his son had excelled academically and was disappointed at the scholarship offer BYU had made to him.

"But we don't pay students to come to BYU," I responded. "Entering BYU is a privilege."

"Yes," the father patiently explained, "but you have to realize that other universities are offering my son far more money."

I wondered if the father believed that the scholarship offer from BYU represented some sort of bid, and implicit valuation of his son's abilities. Perhaps he believed that BYU didn't fully realize his son's obvious academic achievements.

"Here at BYU," I said, "we seek to model the compatibility of rigorous scholarship with deep devotion to the faith. I do not believe that to be the mandate of the other universities that have recruited your son. At BYU we seek to prepare students for service in the Kingdom. Both the source of our funds and our designated mission are so different that offers of financial aid from BYU cannot be evaluated in the same terms as those from other institutions."

The call from this father was not an isolated case. Word came to me about a young man in my stake who was angry over BYU's scholarship offer. I was initially astonished by this response to an offer of assistance. Why would anyone become angry when they were offered financial assistance? On further inquiry, I discovered that the student was angry because the scholarship offer was not as much as he felt that he deserved. It simply did not compare with the scholarships he could have received at other universities. I realized that this young man had not factored in the generous 70% contribution the tithe payers make to support the cost of every BYU student's education, and so the total package offered by BYU was not as different from that offered by the other private institutions as he might think. But the student's indignation was nonetheless real. I fear that he entered BYU with a bit of chip on his shoulder.

In both of these cases, the offers of scholarship assistance from BYU resulted in negative feelings, feelings of indignation and affront. Why? Because there was a belief that the students were entitled to far more.

Entitlement is a very sensitive subject. Even political leaders approach entitlement very cautiously because they know that entitlements are such a volatile issue. I pray that I will not offend any one here if I share a few personal thoughts about entitlement. In the Book of Mormon those who became angry with righteous leaders usually did so because they did not receive what they believed they were entitled to, whether it were praise, absence of condemnation, material goods, or political power. Consider the words of Laman and Lemuel to Nephi:

"Our younger brother thinks to rule over us; and we have had much trial because of him; wherefore, now let us slay him, that we may not be afflicted more because of his words. For behold, we will not have him to be our ruler; for it belongs unto us, who are the elder brethren, to rule over this people (2 Nephi 5:3)."

Laman and Lemuel were angry because they felt that Nephi had taken something, in this case a leadership role, that was rightfully theirs.

May I gently suggest that if you view your scholarship as an entitlement, a payment that is due to you for the hard years of work you performed in high school, you are perhaps viewing your scholarship in an incorrect manner.

How should you then consider your scholarship? Instead of seeing it as an entitlement, I suggest that you consider your scholarship as a gift. In section 46 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord explains the purposes of spiritual gifts:

"They are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments, and him that seeketh so to do; that all may be benefited that seek or that ask of me... that all may be profited thereby (DC 46:9-12)."

Could this saying also be true of your scholarship? If you considered your scholarship as a gift rather than as an entitlement, is there a way that you could use it so "that all may be profited thereby?" Could you use your scholarship to bless the lives of those students who didn't receive scholarships? Extending such thinking further, if you viewed your admission into BYU as a gift rather than as an entitlement, would you seek to use your opportunities at BYU as a means of blessing the lives of worthy church members who cannot even attend here?

Here are a few suggestions on how this could be achieved; perhaps you could add to this list yourself.

• Rigorous Classes

BYU students who see their scholarship as a gift rather than an entitlement will seek to enroll in challenging and rigorous classes rather than only in classes that offer an "easy A."

• Helping Others

BYU students who view their scholarships as gifts rather than as entitlements will seek to help students around them who are not similarly blessed. They will assume leadership in organizing study groups in all of their classes. They will assist other students in academic difficulties, tutor their peers, and reach out to all others in need.

• Preparing for Service in the Kingdom

BYU students who see their scholarships as gifts rather than as entitlements will use their time at BYU to prepare for future service in the Kingdom of God. They will keep themselves pure and unspotted so that they can enter the temple and become parents of an eternal family unit. They will learn to live close to the Spirit so they will be able to identify and reach out to those who are in need. Such students will be particularly cognizant of church members in distant lands who support BYU through tithes and offerings but who cannot enroll here.

• Replenishing the Well

BYU students who view their scholarships as gifts will seek, when they leave BYU, to renew the well, to pass their gift along to someone else. Students will seek, when they are able, to become active donors to the BYU scholarship fund.

I want to reassure you that we are pleased to have you at BYU and pleased to offer you a scholarship. We wish that the amount of your award could be much more, but we hope that you will view your award as a gift which represents a vote of confidence in you and your potential.

All of us at BYU have so many dreams for you. We are particularly excited to discover what you will accomplish in the future after you have finished your BYU education. We are grateful that many generous souls share our dreams and have made it possible for us to grant you a scholarship. I pray that your scholarship will be a blessing both to you and to many others in the future.