Avoiding scholarship scams and fees that should not exist
Read this article in: English · Français · Kinyarwanda · Kiswahili
Imagine a message arrives on your phone. A scholarship place is waiting for you, it says, and all you need to do is pay a small fee to secure it. After months of searching, the offer feels like good news, and that is exactly why it is easy to pay before you check.
This article helps you tell two kinds of payment apart: a fee an institution genuinely charges as part of admission, and a payment someone asks for in exchange for an award. The first can be normal. The second is the one to refuse.
Some fees are real, and they belong to the institution
Not every fee is a warning sign. The Mastercard Foundation says its partner institutions set their own admission fees, and that many of them require a fee as part of the application. Where a partner requires one, the Foundation says it is reimbursed if the candidate is selected for the programme.
So a fee on its own proves nothing. What matters is who it is paid to and what it is for. A fee that goes to the institution you are applying to, through the institution's own website, is part of applying. A fee that goes to a person, an agent or a group, for an award, is something else.
The people who fund scholarships do not ask you for money
Three organisations say the same thing in their own words. The Mastercard Foundation says it never solicits funding or requests payments from individuals. The University of Cape Town says legitimate funders would not request any cash payment for students to secure funding. The University of South Africa (Unisa) says legitimate student funding applications are free, and tells students to watch for fake bursary or scholarship offers that ask for upfront "processing" fees.
Read together, they draw a clear line. If there is a fee, it belongs to the admission process of an institution. The award itself is never something you pay for.
What a copy of a real programme looks like
Scammers borrow the names of programmes people already trust. The Mastercard Foundation says it is aware of Facebook posts advertising recruitment for its Scholars Program and requesting an application fee, and that these groups are not associated with it. The University of Cape Town reported posters from an external entity, circulated on campus without the university's approval, and says real funding opportunities are mainly listed on its bursary noticeboard.
In both cases the real programme has a route of its own. The Mastercard Foundation tells applicants to apply directly through the partner university they wish to attend, so a recruiter who sits between you and the university is already outside that route.
What to do before you pay or share anything
Steps 2, 4, 6 and 7 below follow what the sources say. The others are practical advice.
- Find the scholarship on the provider's own official website, and compare it with what the message says.
- Apply through the route the provider names. For the Mastercard Foundation, that is a partner university.
- Pay only the institution or provider itself, through the payment method on its official website.
- Never share passwords, one-time codes or bank details, whoever is asking. Unisa gives the same advice about login details, OTPs and banking information.
- Slow down. Pressure to pay quickly is a reason to stop and check.
- Ask the institution. The University of Cape Town tells students to check with its Fees Office when they see a suspicious funding advert.
- Report it. The Mastercard Foundation asks the public to report suspected fraud to local law enforcement, and to the Foundation. Unisa lists a whistleblower hotline.
If you are unsure whether an award is genuine, how to find a scholarship you qualify for shows how to read the provider's own page and where to confirm the route.