In 2004, Tennessee will begin a lottery to raise money for college scholarships. The Nashville City Paper has a very interesting article on what Tennessee should learn from Georgia's experience with "lottery scholarships" such as HOPE, which require nothing more than a certain GPA to qualify for free money:
A quick look at what is happening in Georgia should raise alarm bells. The HOPE Scholarship program subsidizes college educations for about 100,000 students yearly. Last year, more than half of the graduates from Georgia high schools qualified for the scholarships by meeting the required B average grade requirement. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently detailed grade inflation in Georgia, as more students are being given the grades necessary to get the scholarships whether they earn those grades or not...
Not surprisingly, it has become easier to graduate from high school in Georgia with a B average — although standardized test scores do not show a similar increase in academic skills.
Unfortunately, despite the good grades being dispensed from Georgia high schools and the large number of Georgia students who thereby qualify for HOPE scholarship dollars, Georgia students are clearly unprepared for college work. Last year, 58 percent of the students attending Georgia colleges on the HOPE scholarship dropped out or flunked out before completing 30 hours. The majority cannot make it past the freshman year of college.
Keep in mind that tuition — in Tennessee and Georgia — funds less than half the cost of a public college education. The other half is picked up by the taxpayers of that state. Georgia is finding it increasingly difficult to fund the expenses of students attending college who do not belong there in the first place.
Tennessee has instituted an even lower academic standard than Georgia when it comes to qualifying for lottery scholarships. Tennessee will require LESS than a B average, or students can qualify with a below-average ACT score. The students who will have their college studies funded by the Tennessee lottery will be even less prepared academically than Georgia students have been. As a result, more than 60 percent of Tennessee lottery scholarship recipients will likely fail to complete their first year of college.
The article calls for a higher average and an above-average standardized test score; if implemented, Tennessee will hear the same sorts of cries about how "racist" it is for a state to require evidence that students can perform college-level work before passing out money for college.
This article also calls for giving out fewer scholarships that are bigger and go to the most-qualified candidates. That way, these student are not only more likely to complete college, but if they don't, the taxpayers aren't stuck with part of the bill.
What happens when the size of the scholarships get big, but the requirements for them are not toughened? Why, you have the current situation in Georgia, where those qualified for the scholarship increase by the thousands every year, and the state has to ask for a 14% jump in the funding for the program. A committee that studied the HOPE scholarship program did recommend tying the scholarship to SAT/ACT scores as well, but also recommended cutting the cost of books and college fees as a way to save money for the program.
It doesn't make sense to me to try to send a lot of kids, some of whom are underqualified, to college in a half-assed way. It's better to pay for everything for only the smartest kids who have the best chance of making it through, so that the obstacles of low SES can be overcome. A scholarship program in which 58 percent of recipients fail to complete 30 hours of college credit is not working. Hopefully Tennessee will learn from Georgia's mistakes.
Posted by kswygert at December 11, 2003 11:10 AM