Chapter II

2.0 Review of Related Literatures, Studies and Systems

This chapter contains the relevant ideas to the proposed title. It helps the proponents in

building the foundation for the proposed title. To dig deeper about our topic and to come up with

ideas that will help us improve the features of the proposed system. This is to familiarize the

proponents on the topic they are dealing with.

2.1 Related Literature

2.1.1 Foreign Literature

Scholarships that assist or cover costs of pursuing a higher education provide a

number of benefits for recipients. From reducing the financial burden of the rising costs of a

college education, to allowing students more time and energy to focus on studies rather than part-

time work, scholarships are one piece in the puzzle of what creates a strong foundation for

supporting students in their success in pursuing a degree, and furthermore, completing that

degree.

The most obvious benefit of scholarships is that they make college more

affordable. From this larger, overarching benefit comes many more benefits. As college costs

continue to rise, a major deterrent to pursuing, and finishing, a college degree is affordability.

Scholarships can give students the financial bump needed to take a leap and enroll in a degree, as

well as a boost to morale and a student's confidence in their ability to work toward a better

future. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is a non-partisan, non-profit

dedicated to providing education and research that informs sound, evidence based policies and

programs geared toward improving the lives of underserved and underprivileged populations.
One of MDRC's areas of focus is in Higher Education. Their publication "Piecing Together the

College Affordability Puzzle" notes that given the drastic increase in costs for attending college,

it's not surprising that students from low-income backgrounds have lower enrollment and

completion rates. According to a study from the National Center for Higher Education

Management Systems, even after applying financial aid, families in the lowest income quintile

still needed to contribute, on average, over 60% of net family income to covering the costs of

tuition and fees. Relative to the degree to which this income covers the basic cost of living,

college affordability, or lack thereof, becomes a huge factor in low-income students not being

able to finish their degrees. MDRC references a number of studies that showed correlations of

higher dropout rates among students with unmet need versus students with no unmet need.

Scholarships also contribute to student success by allowing for more financial flexibility

in terms of the need for a student to hold a job throughout college. This necessity can impede a

student's success because jobs require time and energy spent away from schoolwork and other

academic responsibilities. In addition, the extra time spent working a part-time job reduces time

that could be spent taking advantage of the vast amount of experiential learning opportunities

that colleges and universities offer, such as RSO (registered student organization) involvement,

volunteering, internships and student-leadership positions. In this same vein, philanthropic

scholarships can have a "pay-it-forward" effect in terms of encouraging students to either begin

engaging in altruistic/philanthropic work in order to give them a stronger background for a

scholarship application process, or continue their work in such initiatives in order to maintain

eligibility for receiving scholarships. Merit-based scholarships often require that students enroll

in a certain number of hours and maintain certain grade-point averages. These requirements
make receiving financial aid an active, rather than passive process that gives students an

incentive to perform academically and work consistently toward completing their degree within

four years. As a result, the faster a student finishes their degree, the lower the cost of that degree.

2.1.2 Foreign Studies

The development of educational opportunities throughout the world, as well as the rise in

population in terms of increasing birth rates and a decreasing prevalence of epidemics and

plagues common in the 20th century, has led to an increase in government and private-based

expenditures on education. As of 2010, government expenditure on education, expressed in

percentage points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in the United States mounted to 5.4%,

6.0% in the United Kingdom, 6.6% in Sweden, 5.7% in South Africa, 5.6% in Slovenia, 6.9% in

Norway, 9.1% in Moldova, an astounding 12.8% in Cuba, among other states (World Bank,

2015). Hence, education has been cherished as a vital element of government programs and a

key factor in winning electorate votes. According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the

majority of the aforementioned financial investments have been directed towards the reforming

of educational systems and the improvement of the infrastructure of public schools. Furthermore,

in many of these developed countries, Bachelor studies both in public and private institutions are

subject to scholarship funds that seek to help students develop during their academic studies.

Theoretically speaking, scholarships have an extensive positive impact on students, exemplified

by the following arguments (University of Hawai’i Foundation, 2015).

The idea of developing an e-scholarship system was born out of the fact that the

methodologies of the existing system is a manual process hence the adoption of a new system to

help the scholarship board better manage its processes of application and awarding scholarship
which makes it possible for applicants to apply for scholarship anytime, anywhere and receive

feedbacks with the use of their internet enabled devices.

The main purpose of this project is to develop an online web-based system which can

facilitate the processes of various scholarship applications. In addition, the system can also

provide different functionalities for different kinds of users including students, guidance

directors, committee members and administrators. This project emphasizes the convenience for

these users who participate in the scholarship application procedure to access this web-based

system. In addition, the workload for the UW-L Foundation Office can be effectively and

considerably reduced.

Alon’s findings highlight a pattern identified in other studies that the type of aid

administered to students may affect the relationship between financial support and academic

success and account for some variation across studies. For example, Hochstein and Butler found

that loans were negatively associated with college persistence, while grants had a positive effect

on retention. Using a 1991 entering cohort sample of students eligible for merit scholarships at a

college of fine arts, Schuh found that, after accounting for SAT/ACT composite scores, high

school GPA, and Stafford Loan eligibility, the amount of merit award was the only variable that

significantly predicted graduation. This suggests that monies that do not need to be repaid may

be particularly powerful in predicting student success.

For what concerns the case of Italy, the evidence is not uniform and the present study

ought to provide new insights on the issue. In particular, Garibaldi et al. (2012) find that an

increase in college cost, in response to delayed graduation, exerts a remarkable effect on the on-

time completion rate, using evidence from Bocconi University. In line with this evidence, I find

that monetary incentives speed up the number of credits a student achieves in the first year of the
degree without prejudice to, but actually increasing, average grades. This effect can arguably

help the “Fuori Corso” problem. In other words, the need-based scholarship leads low-income

students to exert more efforts in order to meet minimum credit requirements and to avoid losing

their grants (which is equivalent to an increase in university costs).

REFERENCES

https://www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Literature-review-PDF.pdf

https://www.givainc.com/blog/index.cfm/2015/1/23/Effects-of-Scholarships-on-Student-Success

https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/52484/Wen-Kai%20Shen.pdf?sequence=1

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2011/743120/

http://amsacta.unibo.it/4083/1/WP968.pdf