Foundation’s Financial Troubles Lead To Dropping Scholarships

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (subscription or Web pass required) that the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation has informed several universities that it can no longer support scholarships it had committed to, apparently because of financial difficulties at the Foundation.  Officials at three universities, Indiana University, Ohio State, and Penn State, confirmed that they were told last month that the promised scholarship money for undergraduate business programs would not be forthcoming from the Foundation.  Each of these schools indicated that they were stepping up to provide the scholarship funds from other sources so as not to leave students without expected funds.

The letter informing the universities of this development cited both the effect on the Foundation of the recent downtown in financial markets and a desire to focus its available funds on a single school, Texas State University, which was the alma mater of the Foundation’s founders.  Both of those founders passed away last year.  The Foundation was also the subject of reports in 2003 of lavish expenditures by Scott Mitte, the son of the founders and the Foundation’s current President, reports that the Foundation denied.

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