
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 18, 1992                   TAG: 9203180112
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SCHOLARSHIPS BAN REVIEWED

The Bush administration, which is in the final phase of evaluating its plan to ban college scholarships based on race, appears likely to maintain its view that such scholarships are illegal.

When the Education Department announced the ban in 1990 - a policy change that it said was intended to make the scholarships more widely available - the uproar was immediate.

Civil rights activists, some educators and politicians fear the change would hamper minority students' chances of attending college.

According to figures compiled by the American Council on Education, an umbrella group for many colleges and universities, about 3.5 percent - approximately 45,000 - of all minority students at four-year colleges benefit from scholarships targeted to individuals of specific races or national origin.

About 5.5 million of the nation's 13 million students receive some form of financial aid to help defray the cost of their educations.

But in late 1990, Michael Williams, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department, warned that the University of Louisville and the University of Alabama could not get donations for minority scholarships for playing in the Fiesta Bowl game. Bowl officials had offered $100,000 to the schools after Arizona voters rejected a holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Williams said that scholarships for minority students violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits schools that receive federal money from discriminating on the basis of race.

The decision was put on hold, pending a review of the administration's enforcement policies.

"People don't really understand that the idea is to protect all minority groups' rights," an Education Department official said. "We're not looking to limit people from getting scholarships. We're looking to open them up."

"This policy would signal to many minority students not that the door to education opportunity will be opened, but that it will be closed," said Robert E. Atwell, president of ACT, one of several education groups that consider the scholarships vital to minorities.

by CNB