Selection for the prestigious George J. Mitchell Scholarship will ¡°pause¡± while the US-Ireland Alliance, which operates the programme, considers its ¡°long-term sustainability¡± in the absence of a significant endowment.
The Mitchell Scholarship funds postgraduate study in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland for up to 12 young Americans a year; it was founded in the wake of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, in which US senator George Mitchell played a significant role. The programme will not select a class for the 2025-26 academic year, the US-Ireland Alliance said in a statement.
Funded in part by the Irish government, which has pledged to match any money raised up to €20 million (?17.1 million), the programme is ¡°in no immediate financial difficulty,¡± the US-Ireland Alliance said, but lacks the sizeable endowment of similar awards?such as the Rhodes Scholarship, which funds postgraduate study at the University of Oxford, or the Knight-Hennessy Scholars programme, which supports postgraduate study at Stanford University.
The alliance has estimated that a minimum endowment of $40 million (?31.3 million) would be necessary to ensure the scholarship¡¯s future sustainability.
¡°It is time to pause to determine if there is sufficient interest in retaining the most prestigious scholarship that uniquely sends young Americans to the island of Ireland,¡± Trina Vargo, founder and president of the US-Ireland Alliance, said in a statement.
¡°The support we¡¯ve enjoyed for the last 25 years is very much appreciated and necessary, but unfortunately it¡¯s not sufficient. Hence the need for a bridge to the future, which an endowment will provide.¡±
Setting out in a question-and-answer document why the scholarship had not yet obtained an endowment, Ms Vargo responded: ¡°Because I¡¯m not a billionaire. And we simply haven¡¯t found anyone with the money and/or the power to bring the money, who cares enough about the relationship to endow this.¡±
Ms Vargo has raised concerns about the Mitchell Scholarship¡¯s financial viability in the past: in January 2023, that she wrote to US president Joe Biden as well as the Irish government to ask for their help in establishing long-term funding.
In 2014, the US Department of State cut almost half a million dollars in funding to the programme. At the time, Ms Vargo told?Times Higher Education?that the government department didn¡¯t appear to ¡°care about Europe any more¡±. ??
