Sounds like a typo to me. Not going to argue the semantics though. But there's no such thing as "earned" scholarship money. It's just "treated" the same as earned income. Basically, if the amount of scholarships/grants received in a tax year, exceeds the amount of qualified expenses they were used to pay for in that same tax year, *AND* the student was paid the difference by the college, then the student pays the taxes on the excess, at the parent's tax rate. So the 8615 is required to show what amount gets taxed at the higher rate, and what that rate is.
Note also that just because box 5 is greater than box 2, does not mean all of box 5 was not used for qualified expenses. After entering the 1098-T, the program asks for qualified expenses not included on the 1098-T. So it's possible that all of box 5 (or more than one might think) was used for qualified expenses.
Regardless of the above, the parents will still claim the student as a dependent on the parent's tax return.
