The First Century at Ashoka

100 full scholarships announced for the Batch of 2019–22

Gahena Gambani, Class of 2020

Ashoka University has always maintained that it “endeavours to provide necessary financial support” to students who require it. This can mean two things: offering partial aid, which covers portions of the tuition costs for the three/four years spent here, or full aid, which covers all costs incurred as a part of the program. Close to half of the undergraduate student body attends Ashoka on some amount of financial aid. This aid is strictly need based and is distributed across recipients at the discretion of the Office of Financial Aid.

It seems this endeavour to enable students from various socio-economic backgrounds to study at Ashoka, has deepened with the introduction of 100 full-scholarships for the Batch of 2019–22. According to a statement from the Office, “This will include all scholarships, from a 100% waiver on Tuition up to a full waiver on all costs.” These scholarships will remain need-based, keeping with the Office’s philosophy of “making [Ashoka’s] world-class education affordable for students from all walks of life.”

This move comes not long after the introduction of a monthly stipend of Rs. 3000 for students on exceptional aid. This stipend covers living costs, over and above all the costs of the Ashoka program, for a period of 10 months each academic year. Further, it was only in January 2018 that the administration changed its stance on minimum academic requirements for students on financial aid.

These appreciable attempts also draw attention to the implications they might have for the diversity on campus. Even though Ashoka has admitted growing throngs of students each year, the criticism of it being a campus for the privileged still persists. The claim of increasing diversity may seem counterintuitive since arguably large groups of students are admitted from the same schools across the country in each batch. As of now, the range of people occupying this 25-acre piece of land is still frighteningly small. Perhaps, an increase in the number of scholarships could impact change in the currently limited range of places/schools from which students are admitted.

Having exactly 100 full scholarships raises the question — how many partial scholarships will now be distributed? Subsequently, how many students are to be accepted to the batch of 2022 — does Ashoka wish to admit more than the already large batch of 500 newcomers it welcomed this year? Is this related to the construction of the new campus, scheduled at the earliest for 2021? How does the administration intend to fit over a thousand students on a campus that is smaller than some schools in Delhi?

Finally, the question that some might say should have been the first one — where does this money come from? Even though Ashoka received an anonymous donation of Rs. 100 crore earlier this year, it cannot be assumed that all financial tremors ended there. With the cost of running the campus only increasing with new inhabitants; the construction of a new library, residence hall and an entirely new campus are still underway, the announcement of new scholarships is definitely something to think about.