The Foundation for Fraternal Excellence and the North American Interfraternity Conference are excited to announce the recipients of the inaugural Men’s College Scholarship designed to identify and reward outstanding high school seniors who have demonstrated an ability to excel in the fields of academics, extra-curricular school activities and community involvement.
Men are going to college with less frequency than in the past, and not persisting to graduation at the same rates as women. According to The Wall Street Journal, at the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.
To counter this trend, a diverse group of fraternity alumni founded the Men’s College Scholarship Program to inspire college attendance and academic success by young men. A college education is important and opens many opportunities to students including the many potential benefits of fraternity membership. In fact, recent research has proven fraternities are more relevant than ever before and foster success in college and beyond.
Fraternities create lifelong connections to campuses, communities and friends. Members are three times more likely to obtain an internship while in college and almost twice as likely to have a job waiting when they graduate. The research has also shown that fraternity members experience stronger mental health and are almost five times as likely to be satisfied with their lives as alumni. (Fraternity membership is not a scholarship requirement.)
The 2022 scholarship recipients represent a wide variety of backgrounds from 29 different states and a third are first generation college students. We look forward to seeing this program grow in future years.
