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Education Department Issues New Round of Upward Bound Awards

HELENA, Mont. — The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a second round of funding for programs that help low-income students who aspire to attend college.

The Upward Bound awards are going to programs with applications that were initially rejected because of formatting errors such as not being double-spaced or using the wrong font.

Members of Congress on Wednesday confirmed five-year grants to several universities, including Wittenberg in Ohio, the University of Maine at Presque Isle, Columbia University in New York, and the University of Montana, along with Illinois Central College and Kankakee Community College in Illinois.

The grants included more than $623,000 for Maine at Presque Isle; over $356,000 for the University of Montana and nearly $517,000 for Wittenberg.

Indiana University-Purdue University announced a $2.8 million grant.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos initially said she would not reconsider the Upward Bound applications if they used the wrong font or were incorrectly spaced.

Program administrators and members of Congress decried the bureaucracy. A quarter of the U.S. Senate signed a letter asking that programs be allowed to submit corrected applications to “prevent this absurd result.”

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