These corporations offer scholarship programs based on race
Many of the best known companies in America have teamed up with higher education institutions to offer scholarships to students of only certain races or ethnicities.
Corporations include Chevron, McDonald's, Morgan Stanley, and SC Johnson.
Major corporations in America are providing scholarships for college students, but only if you’re a member of a specific race or gender. Campus Reform has compiled a list of some major U.S. corporations who are offering college scholarships based on race and gender.
SC Johnson
SC Johnson has partnered with Gateway Technical College to offer its STEM Scholars Program only to female students, “underrepresented students of color” and “low income students.” The SC Johnson STEM Scholars Pathway facilitates minority students who are pursuing a STEM-related field by providing them a “pathway” to an associate degree at the technical school.
Gateway Technical College spokesperson Lee Colony told Campus Reform that the “grant allows for men as well as women to receive the grant, students of color and white students. Certainly, there is a component to attracting and encouraging young women of color to enter into STEM fields -- career fields which currently lack women of color -- but it does not exclude others. Men and women can apply.”
“The Foundation is a separate, 501(c)(3) entity from the college. There are many different private donors to the Foundation, and they specify how they would like for those scholarship dollars to be spent,” he continued.
“We are grateful for all the donors in the community and we respect their demographic giving. It assists students in ways the college could not,” Colony concluded.
Google offers several scholarships that are intended for certain racial and gender groups. The Women Techmakers Scholars Program can only be earned by female computer science students. Students that “identify with groups historically excluded from the technology industry” such as African American, Hispanic and female students who have demonstrated a strong “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” are “strongly encouraged” to apply to the Generation Google scholarship.
Microsoft
The Blacks at Microsoft (BAM) Scholarship was established to “enable Black and African American students to attend college.” To be considered, the applicant must be of “African descent” such as African American or Ethiopian. Over twenty-five scholarships totaling $175,000 will be awarded to the recipients of the scholarship this year.
Microsoft also offers a Women at Microsoft Scholarship which encourages women and “non-binary people, those who are gender fluid, and women of transgender experience” to apply. A maximum of $85,000 will be awarded to recipients of the scholarship this year.
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil partners with the Council of the Great City Schools to sponsor the Bernard Harris Scholarship Program which promotes minority students who wish to pursue a degree in a STEM-related field of study. There are four recipients of the scholarship each year. Two boys and two girls, two of which must be Black and the other two Hispanic, are chosen to each receive a $5,000 scholarship.
The corporation also sponsors a scholarship created by the LULAC National Education Service Centers (LNESC) which targets Hispanic students who wish to pursue a degree in engineering. Thirteen recipients receive allocations of the total scholarship value of over $40,000.
NBC Universal
NBC Universal teamed up with LULAC National Education Service Centers (LNESC) to offer ten Latino students with an interest in the entertainment industry $5,000 each as part of the NBCUniversal/LNESC scholarship.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s supports its philanthropic organization, Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC), which offers scholarships to students who are of certain ethnicities. The RMHC Asia Scholarship is dedicated to students who can prove that at least one parent is of Asian-Pacific heritage. The McDonald’s HACER National Scholarship requires that at minimum one parent is of Hispanic heritage.
The company also awarded over $500,000 to 55 Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) college students in 2020 through its partnership with APIA Scholars. As part of its Black & Positively Golden scholarship program, McDonald’s sponsors the Thurgood Marshall College Fund which awards students who attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) with up to $15,000 per academic year.
Morgan Stanley
The Morgan Stanley Richard B. Fisher Scholarship Program targets Black, Hispanic, Native American and LGBT college sophomores and juniors. Recipients receive a financial scholarship as well as a summer internship with Morgan Stanley.
Chevron
The American Indian Science and Engineering Society Chevron Scholarship awards only students who identify as “American Indian, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, First Nations, and other indigenous people of North America” with $5,000 per academic year.
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