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UQ’ s yuletide scholarship debacle
Hundreds mistakenly received offer on Christmas Eve. By Antonia Maiolo
The University of Queensland has had to apologise for an email error that resulted in hundreds of students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds being incorrectly offered scholarships the day before Christmas.
Deputy vice-chancellor professor Joanne Wright attributed the mistaken offers of a 2014 UQ-Link Access Scholarship to an“ administrative error”.
“ I am sincerely sorry about this, as are all my colleagues at UQ,” Wright said.
The blunder occurred when an email sent to actual scholarship recipients was inadvertently distributed to 400 other applicants as well. Staff discovered the error had been made when a number of prospective students contacted the undergraduate scholarships office.
Only a limited number of scholarships are
available each year and are awarded in order of academic merit, Wright said.
The UQ-Link Access Scholarship is valued at $ 3000 a year, for up to four years.
UQ contacted all affected parties by email on January 2, to notify them of the error and to apologise.
“ The university regrets any disappointment or distress caused by this error,” Wright said. She added that school officials were successful in contacting about two-thirds of the affected families by phone and left messages where possible.
Wright explained that all students involved have still been approved for the UQ-Link Access program – an admissions scheme aimed at helping financially disadvantaged students gain entry. This means they will have five bonus ranks applied to any UQ preferences. They will also get a $ 500 start-up bursary if they enrol at the university in semester 1 this year. The vice-chancellor further confirmed that the university wouldn’ t be honouring any of the inadvertent scholarship offers.
St James Ethics Centre executive director Simon Longstaff said the university should consider cases on an individual basis to ascertain whether compensation must be awarded.
“ The university has an obligation to make good for whatever loss has been incurred by those people, even though the mistake made by the university was inadvertent,” Longstaff said.
He said UQ would need to question whether students had made decisions or taken up costs that they would not have without the scholarship offer. But he also said the university did not have an obligation to follow through on any of the mistaken offers.
“ Those who have received the offers would basically be getting a windfall at the expense of some other person,” he explained.“ The university should certainly be sincere in its offer of apology to those inadvertently affected, and make sure that it takes all prudent steps to prevent it from happening again.” n campusreview. com. au | 5