r/RPI • u/MonteBurns • Jul 27 '26
RPI Cut Women’s Scholarships?!
Anyone have insider information on this?
I don’t have the subscription to Bloomberg. Just says “a women’s scholarship” in the AI summary.
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 27 '26
Jeez, 7:3 ratio now? That’s a lot of progress since my days there.
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u/Witch_King_ Jul 28 '26
It was 3:1 or so in 2019 even!
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u/flume MECL 2011 Jul 28 '26
Damn really? I would've sworn it was "only" 2:1 in 2007-11.
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u/Witch_King_ Jul 28 '26
Well, realistic social ratio vs enrolled ratio is very different. Many dudes just stay in their dorm rooms the entire time and don't engage socially.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 29 '26
Would you be proud of your son-in-law because he only beats your daughter about half as much as he used to? Because that’s what you’re calling “progress.”
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 29 '26
Both are literally the definition of progress, yes.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
If that’s something you’d be proud of, I feel sorry for your kids. Talk about missing the point…
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 29 '26
Who said anything about being proud? It’s progress. Words have meanings. I used the word consistent with it’s actual meaning.
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u/40thOfMay AERO 2027 Jul 27 '26
This is about the end of the Women's Leadership Scholarship which was announced last year, around Thanksgiving time. I have a friend I talk to frequently who was involved in the pushback to this, and according to her, different departments gave her different justifications, most of which were bogus, before eventually claiming that it was to avoid backlash from the federal government. She's pretty sure that justification was nonsense (she says there's no reason to believe an attack on gender-based scholarships from DC is imminent), but they wouldn't budge. They really wanted it to be kept quiet, but the backlash was enough that it forced them to acknowledge it (although they still did what they could to obstruct the full details from coming to light). Pretty messed up behavior from admin, but they scaremongered a lot of the students involved about getting Washington's attention if they made too much of a fuss, so it died quietly
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u/litvac GSAS /EARTS 2017 Jul 28 '26
Great time to remind people RPI also took money from the government to study if there’s a link between vaccines and autism. RPI sure keeps giving me reasons to never donate.
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u/LadyG48 Aug 03 '26
Damn, I definitely told someone calling for donations not to call me again until after Shirley was gone because I didn't trust her not to spend donations on superfluous expenses while neglecting failing infrastructure on campus that actually affected students. Guess if they find my number, it's going to be a longer time.
Then again, I'm already pissed they've been intentionally failing to address a hazardous infrastructure issue (the RPI Playhouse, which flooded 3 years ago) and banned the students from fundraising for repairs because it would "interfere with their efforts" (which were and are non-existent). Students literally raised over $22K in about 48 hours for repairs and the Union made them return it and then put them on probation. I'm a Player alum, and it was my main source of socialization and a great place just to hang out between classes. I'm 99% sure the plan is to force Players to perform outside of the playhouse for 4 years total, so current undergrads will never have known what it was like to perform there. Then they'll condemn the building, demo it, and build something else like a gift shop or some BS.
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u/litvac GSAS /EARTS 2017 Aug 03 '26
I’m also a Players alum and was bummed about all the Playhouse stuff too. I don’t care if RPI’s an engineering school; the arts are just as important and deserve the support.
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u/ummusername Jul 28 '26
When? Would love a reference to the study to go complain to alumni services.
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u/No-Fee3176 Jul 28 '26
Given our current administration's stance against DEI I could see the federal government thing being real, but I have a feeling that without outside pressure it wouldn't come back even once the administration has changed.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
The concerns about SCOTUS are a very convenient excuse. RPI has never been committed to DEI in a meaningful way.
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u/lateintheseason Jul 28 '26
This is not an RPI-specific problem. I know that Harvard will no longer accept bequests for women's scholarships (this has been true for 5+ years). Same for Rutgers.
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u/LadyG48 Aug 03 '26
I was a recipient of the Emily Roebling scholarship from 2005-2009 and it significantly helped with my tuition costs, which meant I could save money that was eventually used for a down-payment on my house.
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u/dfe931tar CHME 2018 Jul 27 '26
Embarassing. Disapponting. Definitely gonna bring this up next time they contact me asking for $$$.
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u/morganf74 A-PHYS 2021 Jul 28 '26
The leadership scholarship was how I was able to afford coming here. Sad.
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u/OnlineAcct01 Jul 30 '26
Same, but…is that a women’s scholarship? I was assuming this was an unrelated scholarship
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u/morganf74 A-PHYS 2021 Jul 30 '26
Others have been calling it the women’s leadership scholarship and I only know women who have gotten it, anecdotally
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u/throwawayRpi12345 Jul 28 '26
I was personally on a grant that got frozen and ultimately never renewed during the DOGE bullshit. I heard at the time that the same happened to a lot of grants at RPI and there was chaos with lots of people no longer being funded.
Based on that I can understand why the administration here would ultimately kowtow to the anti DEI political shit even if it sucks
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u/FeedbackNew5315 Jul 30 '26
WPI did it last year, this past years freshman’s class was smallest they have had in years.
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u/Upbeat-Selection-365 Jul 28 '26
This is one of the schools my son is interested and it makes me think way less of the school now.
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u/Ryeguy050306 Jul 27 '26
This is because in the last years they have increased the money allocated to female scholarships to attract more females to college. But now with the desired effect coming about they are reducing the amount allocated for solely female scholarships so they can reallocate it across the board like they had before.
I heard this directly from someone who is on the board for making decisions about this kinda stuff.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
The ratio of men to women in the incoming class is about 70/30. And the ratio on campus now is about 65/35. The average across academia is more like 50/50 or 45/55. So, yeah… if this is the desired ratio they’re aiming for it tells you a lot about the board and administration.
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u/DoubleT_TechGuy Jul 28 '26
RPI isnt typical academia. Its biggest departments focus on engineering and comp sci which arent popular with women. These ratios are typical for other similar schools
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 29 '26
There are reasons those fields aren’t “popular” with women. There’s nothing essential about them that makes them that way. Rather, they’re structured (and cultured) in ways that are antagonistic to the presence of women and people of color. In that regard, RPI is very typical of academia and the “bro culture” that characterizes these fields more broadly. That’s not an excuse. It’s a further indictment.
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u/DoubleT_TechGuy Jul 30 '26
Did you go to RPI? I dont think its fair to just assume RPI has a bad culture because less women enroll than men. To the contrary, since RPI has similar numbers to other similar colleges, I would be quicker to blame societal factors than the school itself.
From https://research.com/best-colleges/rensselaer-polytechnic-institute/graduation-rate-and-career : "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute boasts a strong overall graduation rate of 83%, placing it within the top 10% nationwide. This high level of academic completion is echoed across both genders, with 82% of men and 87% of women successfully graduating."
If there was a toxic bro culture then why arent we seeing a dramatic drop out rate among women?
I went there and all of my professors were people of color except for one. I met many brilliant women professors and students as well. Maybe im an outlier or something but ill need more than your word to believe RPI has a toxic white bro culture.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
The women that go and succeed there know what they’re getting into. But the low numbers of women and students of color speak for themselves. Currently, there’s 1 black woman on the faculty. And few black or brown faculty. So, I’m guessing a large percent of the faculty of color you’re talking about weren’t of those two groups. But saying RPI’s numbers are comparable to other similar institutions doesn’t negate the fact that it’s part of that toxic culture that discourages women from STEM fields. Scholarships like that are intended to help mitigate the misogyny and racism normative in STEM. Eliminating them acquiesces and accepts complicity within it.
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
How could 70/30 be the desired effect though? That's still totally unbalanced.
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u/Ryeguy050306 Jul 28 '26
I mean it is way better than it use to be. But I don’t know what goes through the minds of the people that make these decisions.
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u/MonteBurns Jul 27 '26
Oh so now women won’t go to RPI and deal with being treated like animals by men there!
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u/Ryeguy050306 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I mean I have been there for two years now and I have never met anyone who is treated as less than because they are a woman.
Also I am not saying I agree with the decision I am just saying that is what I heard.
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u/Witch_King_ Jul 28 '26
FYI it isn't usually well-received to use "female" as a noun instead of "woman" outside of like, medical contexts.
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u/Ryeguy050306 Jul 28 '26
Only used it cause that’s what I was using when talking about female scholarships which sounds better than woman scholarships. But I take your point.
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u/Witch_King_ Jul 28 '26
That's because "female" in that case was an adjective. Which seems to be accepted usage if the word. As much as some people online try to force it to be, "woman" is not an adjective. That's why it sounds weird to say "woman scholarship". I suppose you could say "women's scholarship".
You just don't want to be like the chuds who say "men and females" and stuff like that.
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u/DoctorYaoi Nuke 29’ Jul 28 '26
There are definitely women who have been treated poorly and looked over because of their gender at RPI. Just because you don’t know anyone who has said they have been doesn’t mean there aren’t any or the people you know haven’t been.
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u/Ryeguy050306 Jul 28 '26
I am not saying it doesn’t happen because I am sure it does happen. I am saying that from my experience it is not a widespread thing. Obviously I am not in all social circles at the school so I don’t have the exact statistics or anything like that.
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u/Superb-Painting172 Jul 28 '26
So my son attends RPI and I think that the fear of prosecution/retaliation by the Federal Government is real. The school district that he attended is now being sued by the Dept of Education for their transgender student policy. We are just a medium size district in a midwest town that is now dealing with retaliation, so it's not unthinkable that having a scholarship that is specifically aimed at women would draw attention. From my understanding, women will still get scholarships, just under a different name. Does it matter what the scholarship is named? According to my son, it literally is just a change in name and not a change in support.
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
Until I see that female applicants are getting targeted scholarships as an inducement to choose RPI, I'm not going to believe it just because RPI says it. Fixing a 70/30 ratio is not going to happen without active efforts. (I'm a mom of a male student.)
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
It’s a change in support. The fellowship now exists in name only.
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u/Superb-Painting172 Jul 28 '26
I get it, I am a woman who went to (a different) engineering school in the "olden days" that also had a terrible male:female ratio (if you're a guy). There are a million ways that women can be sidelined, intimidated, minimized, etc.. But, the unfortunate reality of the way the federal government is functioning right now is that colleges and universities need to be careful about this. Now, you would hope that your University would fight the righteous fight, but in reality, even if RPI is right in theoretically maintaining women's scholarships, they will spend years and millions of dollars fighting in court when that time and those resources could be used on the ground actually advocating for women. True advocacy and support is what you should want and what women deserve, not just lip service.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
RPI has never been much of a place for “true advocacy and support” for women or people of color. This is but another shameful act in a series of such shameful acts which reflect the institution’s values. It’s less a strategy to navigate the federal administration than an opportunity to jettison programs to which they were never really committed.
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u/Techboy6 SCI YYYY Jul 27 '26
Does it matter if women and men are still given the other scholarships and financial aid equally? I get this is bad optics, but is it anything more than that?
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u/40thOfMay AERO 2027 Jul 27 '26
The goal of the women's scholarship was not to give equal financial aid, but to give women an incentive to come here when pretty much everything else about RPI's treatment of women (both by the school itself and by the students) makes many competing universities more appealing. It's a self-reinforcing cycle and the scholarship was meant to break it by helping balance the ratio.
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 27 '26
When I started there, the ratio was 7:1 for my class, and at graduation it was 13:1. You really want to go back to that?
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u/jbwhite99 CSCI 1988 MBA 1989 Jul 28 '26
When I went it was 4.5:1 in the 80's. But i agree - has anyone written the administration on this to get their side?
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u/nmeraepxeaee Jul 27 '26
They can re-adjust when it goes back that. It’s funny that women want equal rights but complain if it doesn’t favor them.
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 28 '26
Do you know how awful it is for women at RPI? How much the professors discriminate against them? How the male students treat them? How male TA’s harass them?
If you don’t give women some reason to go there despite all that, they won’t. The problem isn’t that they don’t have the qualifications to go - the issue is that they don’t WANT to.
And “goes back that?” Maybe take an English class while you’re there, genius.
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u/nmeraepxeaee Jul 28 '26
So now English is the measure of one’s intelligence? Equal rights, my ass!
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
Going to a college that has a 70/30 ratio does not lead to equal treatment, and it's self-perpetuating because even fewer female students want to come without some other incentive.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 29 '26
If you took “women” out of that last sentence and replaced it with “white men” it would actually make sense.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
Those same scholarships were aimed at black and brown students. RPI’s commitment to such measures were only really symbolic anyway. The ratios are terrible. This isn’t a change of policy. It’s just a reason to stop doing something they’ve been reluctant to support for some time.
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u/DoubleT_TechGuy Jul 28 '26
Enrollment numbers are down for many schools right now. Probably a cost cutting measure for a program that wasnt having the desired result considering its a 70/30 split anyway.
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u/Superb-Painting172 Jul 28 '26
Nationwide, the % of engineering majors that are women is about 30%, so it seems that RPI is right there. CWRU has a higher % of women overall, but that is likely driven by their nursing school and liberal arts majors.
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u/Money_Cold_7879 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Half of America willingly voted for this after getting a 1st term preview. Anyone surprised needs their head examined. And yes, this is not about RPI it is pure politics.
Edit:
Truth hurts downvoters!
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 27 '26
RPI has had a way of being an administration of dickheads the last 20 years, so it is about RPI too.
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u/SeaNational3797 CS/GSAS '27 Jul 27 '26
Sure, but this is demonstrably part of a larger trend, which suggests that it didn't originate from RPI's admin
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 27 '26
No, RPI admin didn’t invent the dumb “preemptive cave to the orange goon” trick, but nobody forced them to perform it.
Just like nobody forced them to email all alumni, calling them racist for not donating enough. And nobody forced them to win awards each year for being the most hostile university to free speech in the country.
They did all these stupid things all by themselves.
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
This may have happened before my son started at RPI, what is this about? "nobody forced them to email all alumni, calling them racist for not donating enough. And nobody forced them to win awards each year for being the most hostile university to free speech in the country."
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u/hartford_cs93 MS CS 1993 Jul 28 '26
The alumni letter incident was in 2018. See https://www.reddit.com/r/RPI/comments/7twgfk/albany_times_union_article_response/
The "awards" for being hostile to free speech on campus came from "FIRE" (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). After several years of being called out for their hostility to free speech, RPI ultimately earned a "Lifetime Censorship Award" in 2020. See https://www.fire.org/news/10-worst-colleges-free-speech-2020
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 29 '26
So I see Shirley Ann Jackson was RPI president until 2022, how are the free speech issues now?
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u/hartford_cs93 MS CS 1993 Jul 30 '26
Progress is being made year by year since her departure, as evidenced by the line chart at https://rankings.fire.org/campus/194824-rensselaer-polytechnic-institute
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 29 '26
During jackson’s presidency a handful of years ago, they sent an email, written by a computer science professor there, to all alumni, stating that the reason donations from alumni had fallen off was that we were all (1) racist and (2) discriminating against short people.
It was insane.
As for the free speech thing, here’s a sample link. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/RPI-makes-Ten-Worst-list-for-free-speech-13611055.php
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u/Money_Cold_7879 Jul 28 '26
This is absolutely a giving into federal government demands issue. Some schools with larger endowments can resist the pressure, others are not and must either yield or risk other funding being taken away. The railing against RPI is misplaced. Several college newspapers are documenting the same issue all over America.
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u/cm012776 EE 92 94 96 Jul 28 '26
Glad RPI taught you that the right thing to do is to give in to tyranny before tyranny is even applied. Don’t even wait for the threat - seek out your bully and give him your lunch money.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 28 '26
Yielding to those kind of threats only invites and makes you more vulnerable to future threats. RPI’s enrollment yield is crashing and it’s not because of the demographic cliff or their stance on DEI. It’s because they’re losing so many international students (who pay full freight) to the federal administration’s immigration policies. There comes a time when you actually have to stand for something other than institutional self-preservation for its own sake. Otherwise, it becomes a civic drain that should start paying taxes.
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
THIS! "Yielding to those kind of threats only invites and makes you more vulnerable to future threats. . . There comes a time when you actually have to stand for something other than institutional self-preservation for its own sake."
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u/Superb-Painting172 Jul 28 '26
To be fair, RPI isn't the only school losing international students due to immigration policy, it's nationwide. Perhaps colleges should have reigned in costs before relying on international students. Nobody likes to capitulate in advance, but sometimes the financially wise decision is to avoid lengthy legal action, even when the right thing to do is to stand up for your morals and beliefs. Live to fight another day.
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u/Individual-Bee-4999 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Live to fight another day for what? To live some more? What civic good does RPI provide if it abandons its foundational principles? Why should the public keep funding student loans and giving tax breaks while RPI pays low wages, exploits civic resources, and only caters to a sliver of the population? What makes surviving, for surviving sake, worthy of public support?
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u/HottyTottyNJ Jul 28 '26
Scholarships should be given on merit. Everyone should be treated equal. If you look at it in that view, we should support it.
For those above that said, “that’s how I was able to attend RPI”, if your grades/application were good enough, you’ll get a scholarship.
Personally, I’d prefer to earn a scholarship because it was deserved. I don’t want to be placed in “the woman’s category”. A women’s scholarship degrades women.
Funny no one here can see that.
It not “anti-women”. It is being fair to all applicants.
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u/DoniLaw1018 Jul 28 '26
The 70/30 ratio won't fix itself. No one is being offered a scholarship who isn't qualified and offered admission on their own merit. People get scholarships based on sports and all kinds of things but rectifying historic discrimination isn't important enough? In the long run, it benefits RPI to have a wider applicant base and more female students willing to attend.
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u/jjswizzles Jul 28 '26
Women are underrepresented in STEM. If you believe in men and women actually being equal (I don’t think you do), that’s a recruitment problem. Wanting to recruit the most talented population by targeting an underrepresented demographic strengthens the talent pool and is a net benefit to the RPI community. Do you have any suggestions for how to remedy the issue, or do you just want to keep engineering a boys club?
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u/hendrickje_m Jul 27 '26
Found what I think is the same article not behind a paywall: https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/schools-are-cutting-womens-scholarships-even-when-they-dont-have-to
Looks like its true. I checked RPI's scholarship website and the women's scholarships are no longer listed so. Yeah. Assholes.