39 Fellowship Winners Lose, Win Again

Thirty-nine students were told last month they had won prestigious government scholarships for graduate study, only to find out later that it was all a big mistake and they were only runners-up.

“I think my heart snapped in half,” said a California doctoral candidate who wrote her congressional delegation in a plea for help.

Help came Wednesday when the Education Department called the runners-up and said they will get the fellowships after all, as will the rightful winners.

“We were working at first to find out what happened and why an error occurred. After reviewing that, we came to the conclusion this was the right thing to do,” said Education Department spokeswoman Erica Lepping.

It will cost taxpayers $975,000 to fix the error, which the government is blaming on a private contractor.

Lepping said the mistake was discovered when a runner-up, officially called an “alternate,” called the agency with a question.

At stake were the prestigious Jacob K. Javits Fellowships, which have been awarded since 1986. Named for the late liberal Republican senator from New York, the fellowships pay tuition and fees plus a stipend for doctoral and master’s candidates in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Current stipends are $15,000 a year.

The winners are selected on merit and financial need and get up to four years of financial support. Some 1,100 to 1,300 students apply each year. This year there were 138 winners, in addition to 39 alternates.

Under privacy rules, the names of scholarship winners are confidential.

Among those who got the good news and then the bad news was the California student, who found a message on her answering machine telling her she wasn’t really a winner.

The way she found out “was devastating” and “very flaky,” said Nancy Coolidge, coordinator for government relations and student financial support at the University of California system.

Coolidge shared the student’s e-mail but said the woman didn’t want to be named. It was one of many such pleas to Congress.

The government is considering legal action against the contractor, DTI Associates of Arlington, Va. The company has a one-year, $190,000 contract to handle applications.

Bruce Rankin, director of government services at DTI, said Wednesday: “We physically mailed letters that were developed by the Department of Education.”

Later he issued a statement saying in part: “An unfortunate miscommunication between both parties led to a clerical error. We are actively working with the department to resolve this issue.”