The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

Editorials

Discussion

Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.
comments powered by Disqus
January 29, 2012

HOPE scholarship needs a long-term fix

Dalton Daily Citizen





Less than a year ago, Gov. Nathan Deal and members of the General Assembly assured us that they had fixed the finances of the HOPE scholarship program. Now, they warn us that the program is once again facing red ink as lottery revenues are failing to keep up with growing demand.

The problem is that the number of Zell Miller Scholars has been much greater than anticipated. Those students — who must graduate high school with a 3.7 or higher grade point average and score at least 1,200 on the SAT or 26 on the SAT — get a full scholarship to any public university in Georgia. Funding for Zell Miller Scholarships, unlike other HOPE scholarships, isn’t tied to lottery revenues, so they are projected to eat up an increasing amount of scholarship revenue.

We don’t know how lawmakers will address this problem. Some have talked about barring students from families that earn above a certain income from receiving HOPE scholarships. Others have talked about tightening the academic standards students must meet to receive a HOPE scholarship.

We fear that any fix the General Assembly makes will just temporarily quench the bleeding.

The best long-term proposal is to tie all scholarships to lottery revenues and to end the promise of full scholarships.

Each student would receive a set amount of money based on projected lottery revenue and would decide for himself or herself where to spend that money. That would encourage students to spend that money wisely. At a school such as Dalton State College, that amount might be enough to pay tuition, fees and maybe even books, but at the University of Georgia it might not even cover full tuition. Each student would then have to decide which school would provide the best value.

The Zell Miller Scholarships essentially subsidize the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech — where 86 percent of those students study — at the expense of the rest of the system.

Tying all scholarships to lottery revenues could put the HOPE scholarship program on a more sound financial footing and provide a boost to the entire University System of Georgia, not just the flagship schools.

Text Only
Editorials