For the second time in six months, students are accusing the Maryland Higher Education Commission of bungling their scholarships.

Graduate students who pledged to teach at high-need Maryland schools say the scholarship money they were awarded is showing up months late and doesn’t cover the full cost of their degrees, leaving them scrambling to pay unexpected bills. Adding to the confusion, students say, is limited communication from the commission, whose messages at times conflict with the way the scholarship is advertised.

The complaints come after the Maryland Higher Education Commission made headlines this summer when it quietly revoked scholarships for undergraduate students just days before they moved into their dorms. The commission reversed the decision after public backlash.

Now professors and students are once again ringing alarm bells.

“The award amounts are not correct,” said Dana Grosser-Clarkson, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who works in the teaching program. Students “were told to accept the award amount and that things would be fixed later.”

The Teaching Fellows for Maryland Scholarship is billed on the commission’s website as “100% of the annual tuition and mandatory fees” as well as room and board at graduate teaching programs in the state’s public colleges. To qualify, students commit to two years of teaching in a school, subject or grade level with a shortage of qualified educators.

Maryland desperately needs more educators, a problem Gov. Wes Moore has vowed to tackle. The Teaching Fellows scholarship sets aside $14 million to help students earn a teaching certificate, a credential that costs about $32,500 at UMD. That cost has long been a barrier for aspiring educators, whose salaries start around $60,000 in Maryland.

For years, Grosser-Clarkson said, students received their scholarships without a hitch. But this year, she said, they’ve faced a litany of challenges.

Arthur Liao, of Rockville, applied for the scholarship last March while a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park. Liao said he always wanted to be a teacher and learned about the scholarship during his freshman year.

About a week after he submitted his application, he said, the commission’s online scholarship portal showed that he was awarded about $30,000.

“The scholarship said it would cover 100% of tuition and room and board,” Liao said. “But then, when I checked my UMD bill, my room wasn’t covered at all.”

Liao said he called the commission over the summer when he checked his bill, and an official told him he didn’t get the full amount due to “some sort of budget issue.”

They recommended he apply for other scholarships.

The money is awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, and a document outlining the conditions of the scholarship notes that “awards are subject to the availability of funds.”

But Meghan Music, executive director of external and legislative relations for the Higher Education Commission, did not answer questions about the discrepancies between the way the scholarship is advertised — a full ride — and the partial awards to students.

The commission takes the “concerns that have been raised seriously,” she wrote in a statement. But the commission “cannot substantiate the claims as described,” she wrote. She declined to elaborate.

Music wrote that the scholarship “does not guarantee that every cost category — particularly off-campus housing — will be fully covered for every student.”

As of Jan. 13, a total of 608 students have been awarded funding totaling $13,998,369 of the scholarship’s $14 million budget, Music said.

“Given that funds may become available and acceptance decisions cannot be predicted in advance, the application remains open in order to maximize the distribution of funds up to the annual allocation,” Music wrote. “Once all awarded funds have been accepted, the application will be closed, and the remaining waitlisted students will be notified.”

But Liao was not waitlisted for the scholarship, he said, and he’s living in an on-campus dormitory.

Liao said his parents have been helping him pay for his living expenses as he earns his certification, which has allowed him to stay out of debt. Not all of his classmates have that support.

Allison France, of Easton, was encouraged to apply for the Teaching Fellows scholarship by her professors while an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland. She applied in the spring, but didn’t hear back right away because of technical issues with the forms she filled out. She enrolled in the certification program in the meantime; faculty told her it was unheard of for the money to run out.

But things got stressful for France and a few other students, she said, when they still hadn’t heard from the commission over the summer.

After her professors stepped in, France and Grosser-Clarkson said, the university granted France and a few other students extensions to pay their tuition. The commission released the scholarship decisions the day their tuition was due.

“I did find out that I received the scholarship, but it was not for the full amount it should have been,” France said.

She was offered less than half what tuition, room and board cost, which she begrudgingly accepted. The commission deposited the money in France’s account in December, about five months after she was supposed to receive it, and only after a reporter from The Banner asked the organization about issues with the scholarship.

Music, the commission official, said that “students may experience delays in receiving funds for a variety of administrative reasons, including incomplete enrollment verification, missing institutional certifications or timing associated with institutional disbursement processes.”

France said she ended up taking out a much larger loan than she anticipated, and the stress of waiting months for the scholarship weighed on her, she said.

“It’s been absolutely treacherous,” she said. “To be in the limbo of, am I getting the money? Am I not? Is it going to be the full amount? And to have these questions swirling for months has definitely affected me.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.