HOPE Scholarship

The HOPE Scholarship, created in 1993 by the state of Georgia legislature, is a university scholarship program that has been adopted by several other U.S. states. HOPE (a reverse acronym for "helping outstanding pupils educationally") is funded entirely by the revenue from the Georgia Lottery, and is administered by the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC).

Program details

The program is entirely merit-based, meaning that a student's ability to pay for his or her own education is not a factor in determining if he or she receives it. Previously, there was a cap of 100,000 dollars of income for the parents of traditional-college-age students.

The basic requirements are:

• The student is a resident of the state of Georgia for at least a year
• The student graduated high school with a 3.0 GPA ("B" average)
• The student maintains a cumulative 3.0 GPA throughout college

The scholarship pays full tuition, a $150 per semester (100 per quarter) textbook allowance, and most mandatory student fees for the recipient to attend any public college in the University System of Georgia, up until the semester in which the student attempts his or her 127th credit hour for semesters, or 190th for quarters in the Technical College System of Georgia (where it is called the HOPE Grant). In some instances, an equivalent amount is applied towards tuition for private universities in Georgia.

In 2005, a decrease in lottery revenue led to questions about whether sufficient funding would be available to continue offering the scholarship in its present form. Several suggestions were made to decrease the program's costs, including tying the scholarship to standardized test scores or checking students' college GPAs more frequently to avoid paying tuition for students who had dipped below 3.0. Political rivals of Governor Sonny Perdue criticized his management of the program, and HOPE's future became an important state political issue. However, much of that year's debate was rendered moot when lottery sales increased the next year.

Goals

The HOPE program has two stated goals:

1. To offer academically superior students who would not otherwise be able to afford college the opportunity to receive higher education and
2. To offer an incentive to academically-superior students who can afford to attend college to remain in the state of Georgia, countering the "brain drain" phenomenon Georgia was experiencing prior to the program, when many talented students were attending universities in other states.

Criticism

In 2005, the minimum grade was raised from a "B" (80%) to a grade-point average of 3.0 around (around 85%), dumping thousands of students in Atlanta Public Schools alone, and more each of the 180 other school districts across the state out of eligibility. This change took effect immediately, so that many students who maintained required grades for all four years were refused the scholarship.

Also since 2005, HOPE does not pay any new or increased student fees, including so-called "technology fees" imposed due to cuts in state funding by the Georgia General Assembly. Conversely, the income cap was not reinstated, and payments for enrollment in some private schools was still allowed.

All college credits ever attempted are counted against the student. This includes hours which the student was not eligible for and did not receive HOPE, or were taken in another state or country, or before the HOPE even existed, or withdrawals due to major hardships such as medical issues.

HOPE has been blamed for increased levels of grade inflation in Georgia schools, with instructors feeling pressured to give their students higher grades to maintain the necessary GPA for the scholarship.

Critics have claimed that the HOPE scholarship disproportionately benefits students from affluent school districts because they tend to do better academically. The HOPE scholarship is funded primarily through income from lottery ticket sales, and people who buy lottery tickets tend to be from lower economic classes. For these reasons, critics claim that the scholarship represents a type of regressive tax.

HOPE's existence has also been cited as a factor in the state of Georgia consistently having low average SAT scores relative to the rest of the nation, based on the idea that students who would not normally attempt to go to college now decide to do so based on the affordability factor provided by HOPE rather than on their academic performance. The argument holds that these students, who must take the SAT to enroll in college, bring down the state's average with their scores. This theory has not been tested.

Statistics from a survey question asking students their high school GPA from the College Board SAT test are available on page six of this document.

External links

• Georgia's HOPE Scholarship and Grant Program