Fattah Higher Ed Conference Attendees Get Full-Ride Grad School Scholarships
By David Pluviose
The 700 students attending the 20th Annual Fattah Conference on Higher Education in Philadelphia knew they would be getting coached on how to navigate their way through graduate school. What they didn’t know is that they’d also get full scholarships through the doctoral level just for showing up.
U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, D.-Pa., in partnership with the Pennsylvania
State System of Higher Education, The Educational Alliance and 17 Pennsylvania colleges and universities, announced a $25 million full-ride scholarship program for any of this year’s conference attendees who are admitted to the graduate programs of the participating schools.
“We’ve been hosting this conference for the last 20 years, and we have had over 10,000 undergraduates participate and go on to graduate school, and on the 20th anniversary, as part of our effort, we asked the participating universities to make available full scholarships,” Fattah says.
Founded in 1987 as the Graduate Opportunities Conference by Fattah, then a Pennsylvania state senator, the conference aims to increase the enrollment of minority students in graduate and professional schools.
“It’s critically important that we get more of our students — particularly African-Americans, Hispanics — to pursue terminal degrees. It’s not something one can legislate,” he says.
Since Fattah first made the scholarship announcement, Philadelphia University and the University of Pennsylvania have also signed on.
“Penn has offered full rides to any one of these students who wants to pursue a doctorate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Now the numbers are 19 universities who are participating, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are one or two more before it’s over with,” Fattah says.
Dr. Hai-Lung Dai, a professor of chemistry at Penn, sees this announcement as a positive step towards getting more minorities to pursue terminal degrees in the hard sciences.
