Top-Performing Students Denied State Scholarship Funds

Some 1,500 Georgia high school students will not receive the state scholarship funds they were promised for becoming valedictorians or for graduating in the top of their class, The Associated Press reports (“Georgia Scholarships to End for 1,500 Students,” April 26, 2009).

In a last-minute decision, state legislators cut the Governor’s Scholarship Program out of Georgia’s 2009 state budget, leaving the state’s Student Finance Commission to notify students they won’t be receiving the financial aid they were promised for the coming academic year.

The scholarship program was created in the mid-1980s to encourage the state’s top high school graduates to choose in-state schools for their college education. Over the past few years the state has significantly reduced funding for the scholarship, cutting the program’s funds from more than $4.5 million in the mid-1990s to $1.3 million in recent years.

Governor’s Scholarship recipients also receive Georgia’s HOPE scholarships, which give students up to $3,500 to cover tuition, fees, and books at the state’s public institutions. The Governor’s Scholarship is intended to help students pay for room and board and other miscellaneous college expenses.

Some state officials have argued that the funding cuts to the program may have made it difficult for the program to meet its intended goal of retaining the state’s top students.

“[$900 is] not enough to say, ‘Instead of going to Harvard or going to Vanderbilt or going to Duke, I am going to the University of Georgia,” said president of the Georgia Student Finance Commission, Tim Connell. “It’s probably became more of an ‘attaboy’ for valedictorians.”

State Representative Kathy Ashe, a former teacher and a member of the House Education Committee, said she wasn’t made aware of the program’s elimination until she received a copy of the Student Finance Commission’s letter to students but she believes that these incentive programs are needed.

“We need to make it a priority to reward these deserving students and keep them in the state,” Ashe said. “I think it’s one of those places where priorities become very clear.”

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