News

Project Working Mom 2010 Offers Millions in Scholarships for Online Degrees

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/22/10

Working parents may be able to head back to college to earn their degrees with full scholarships under a new project launched by eLearners.com, a site that provides information about online degrees and colleges.

Project Working Mom 2010 will award up to 285 full-tuition scholarships totaling nearly $5 million to adults who want to attend one of several participating institutions. Those include Ashford University, Everest University, Virginia College, Walden University, Capella University, Saint Leo University, Allied Schools, and Ashworth College. All are accredited private, for-profit, or career institutions that offer online programs.

This year's Project Working Mom is the fourth in a series of programs that have awarded about 150 full-tuition scholarships, totaling approximately $6 million.

The application process asks a series of questions, including how many children the applicant has, level of education completed, type of degree sought, and area of study. As the application is completed, it recommends specific programs at particular institutions that match the applicant's needs and interests.

"When we first started the Project Working Mom program, we knew there were problems adults faced when returning to school, but we were unaware of the magnitude of it," said Terrence Thomas, executive vice president of marketing for eLearners.com. "With single mothers, it is particularly acute as only 16 percent of single mothers have a bachelor's degree. Attempting to overcome the barriers of time, money and confidence is ominous. We were literally flooded with hundreds of thousands of essays and we realized that we need to continue to raise awareness of the issues and physically do what we could to help get people to school.