“I won a scholarship from the Taco Bell Foundation. And when I submitted the check to my university, they decreased my institutional scholarship by half, they increased my federal loans, and eliminated my work study,” Lewis said. “I had to pay over $15,000 out of pocket and it gave me two choices, whether to drop out of college or get a private loan.”
Michele Johnson has advocated for a ban on scholarship displacement for nearly a decade. Johnson was behind Maryland’s push to get rid of the practice, becoming the first state to do so in 2017.