Several UPEI students are feeling a financial pinch because the P.E.I. government was late in delivering a scholarship for graduating students, and the university is refusing to release the scholarship money.

'The scholarship arrived the next day but I was told by the UPEI accounting office that I could not access it until March.'— Angus McPhail

The new George Coles University Graduate Scholarship is meant to help fourth-year students with their tuition. But for some students, the $2,000 award didn't arrive in time to cover this final semester, and they stepped in to pay the money themselves.

"I went in the day before tuition was due and I paid what I still owed, believing the scholarship would come sooner rather than later," student Angus McPhail told CBC News last week.

"The scholarship arrived the next day but I was told by the UPEI accounting office that I could not access it until March."

That means McPhail, and others, have a $2,000 credit in their UPEI accounts that they can't touch. McPhail said it's frustrating to have bills to pay and not be able to touch the $2,000 sitting in his student account. Adding to that frustration is the realization students who were late making their tuition payment simply had their school fees paid off by the late-arriving scholarship.

"If the UPEI accounting office had told me, or if they had been informed that the scholarship would be coming the next day I could have just saved my money and allowed the scholarship to pay for my tuition," said McPhail.

UPEI would not comment in detail on this story, saying only it recognizes there is a problem with the system, and it hopes to have it sorted out next year.

The provincial Department of Advanced Learning said it's simply a case of growing pains with a new program, and the delay shouldn't happen again.