San Diego State University failed to award $20 million in available scholarships over the past decade due to a variety of problems, preventing money from flowing to thousands of students who were trying to cope with rising education costs.

Campus officials said SDSU has been hobbled by an outdated scholarship management system that can make it difficult for students to find and apply for the awards.

The university also says it needs to convince more donors to make their scholarships open to a larger number of students.

Since 2008, SDSU allotted slightly more than $63 million for scholarships and made roughly 24,000 awards, helping about 18,700 students. But university documents show that only $42.9 million — or 68 percent — of the money was spent.


The leanest year was 2016-17, when only 61 percent of the money was awarded.

It is unclear how many students could have gotten a scholarship, or larger awards, if all of the money had been given away.

But the $20 million that went unspent represents enough funding to serve thousands of students. And SDSU officials say the school —like others — is in an endless search for such money to meet student needs.


“It should be easy for SDSU to achieve 100 percent fund distribution,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Savingforcollege.com, a nationally known consumer website.

“The only issues that might result in less ... involve students who do not accept the offer of admission. But one can easily deal with that by doing a second distribution of leftover funds. No student will ever complain about receiving more gift aid than originally promised.”

SDSU President Adela de la Torre says she plans to launch a new scholarship management system in 2020 that will automatically link students to multiple scholarships using a single application. Students have long been required to file an application for every award they seek.

De la Torre also announced that the university will endeavor to award at least 90 percent of its scholarship money each year.


She has been working on the problem with faculty and staff, noting that, “We all agreed that the fund distribution sitting below 70 percent for several years was not acceptable.”

The problem precedes de la Torre, who is finishing her first year in office.

SDSU began to explore the issue in 2017, during a low point in scholarship awards.

The university had been enjoying an increase in scholarship funding due to a record-breaking private fundraising campaign. But the percentage of scholarship money being given away each year varied from the low 60s to mid-70s.


The problem arose during a decade-long period in which the price of tuition and fees in the California State University system was in the process of doubling, to its current level, $7,488.

There is no national, comparative database that closely tracks how well colleges and universities do each year in awarding institutional scholarship money.

“My impression is that many colleges face challenges,” said Kantrowitz. “They require students to apply for institutional scholarships instead of automatically matching them with scholarships for which they are eligible.”

Hunting for money anywhere can be exasperating, said Shirag Shemmassian, who operates an academic counseling service in San Diego.


“Many families feel frustrated or confused when they routinely hear how ‘there’s so much money out there and they just have to find it,’” Shemmassian said. "(They) don’t know where or how to look. A likely part of the solution is schools identifying and notifying eligible students, but also more education around how to look for and find scholarships in general.”

Until the early 2000s, SDSU students typically had to visit an office on campus and thumb through large binders to see which scholarships were available. They would file a paper application if they located one.

SDSU later developed its own scholarship management software, which worked for a while. But school officials say the current version can be confusing, time consuming and incomplete.

The university reviewed 813 of its scholarship funds last year and found problems with about half of them, according to documents reviewed by the Union-Tribune. Some scholarships lacked sufficient funds.


SDSU is adopting the Blackbaud Award Management System, which is used by 19 other CSU campuses. Students will no longer have to write an essay when applying for the scholarship, unless it is expressly required by the donor.

“This will be a clearer, faster, more efficient way to look for scholarships,” said Rose Pasanelli, director of financial aid and scholarships at SDSU.

“A lot of our students are using smartphones. They want a ‘one-and-done’ tool for this.”

