Georgia's Hope Scholarship Bad for Education
Good for Lottery Retailers
Encourages Grade Inflation at All Levels
To be eligible for the HOPE scholarship high school students must achieve a 3.0 GPA in a college preparatory curriculum. For those hovering around a 2.9 heading into their final semester of high school this creates an extraordinary amount of pressure. The difference in an "A" or "B" in one class could cost the student and their family thousands in lost financial aid.
The pressure doesn't stop with the students, however, as teachers often feel pressured to inflate a student's overall grade to the next highest letter. In the example above, a teacher faced with delivering an "A" or "B" grade to a student riding the eligibility fence may be persuaded to give the higher grade. After all, would you want to be responsible for costing a student thousands of dollars in financial aid?
The Path of Least Resistance
Once in college, many students face tremendous pressure to maintain a 3.0 GPA to continue their HOPE scholarship eligibility. Students tend to shy away from tough disciplines such as medicine or engineering for fear they could lose their HOPE scholarship money. This contributes to the shortage of doctors, nurses and engineers that Georgia is currently facing, and increases the glut in the market of liberal art graduates with no real career path. Is this really the direction we want our state's higher education system heading?
Money Not Distributed Equitably
The HOPE scholarship places no family income cap on eligibility. The typical trend in Georgia is for lower income families to purchase lottery tickets in hopes of getting rich while sending rich kids to school for free. A lower-income family with a hard-working student and a 2.9 GPA receives no assistance from Georgia's HOPE scholarship program during their first semesters at school. A wealthy family of an underachieving student with a 3.0 GPA and no career goals gets free tuition and books. This just doesn't pass the common sense test. If public lottery funds are collected for the funding of higher education then I believe all should benefit from those funds. A better plan would be to use the money collected to subsidize tuition across all Georgia's state institutions, lowering the cost for everyone accepted based on university admission standards and who successfully matriculate towards a degree in their chosen area of studies.
Published by Tyler Foster
I am a 30 year old husband and father of two working in software development for money, but writing for fulfillment. View profile
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10 Comments
Post a CommentPlease tell me how a hardworking student has a 2.9 GPA, but an underachieving student has a 3.0 GPA? Yeah the only thing that lacks commonsense is the person who wrote this article. Oh and also HOPE DOES NOT pay for all of books. It only give $150 per semester for books. Higher income people also pay the lottery not jsut lower income. Maybe those lower income people could invest all that thrown away money on the lottery and invest in their child's education themselves. Ever think of that? No you did not I persume because that is the typical mind of a Liberal. You should be ashamed of yourself and learn to work hard for what you earn.
To me, this article is what is wrong with this country. Students might feel pressure? Are you serious? If the pressure gets to them, then they do not deserve it! Most of my family members and friends are teachers and I have never heard one of them say,"Gosh, I'm worried about my student, If I give him a B, they might not be eligible for the hope." To say teachers feel pressure to switch grades in order for their students to recieve the Hope is rediculous. A program that gives thousands of Ga. college students thousands of dollars a year for school is GOOD not bad. I'm sure reward of knowledge and success of the number of students who get a 3.0 in order to recieve the Hope far outweigh the problem of those who felt too much pressure. The only person with a lack of common sense here are the people who agree with this article.
As I do not agree with the logic behind this article, I do agree with the conclusion that Georgia needs another method of funding to cut the cost of school attendence. I am a student and do have HOPE. I work very hard to maintain the 3.0 GPA requirement and I also work a full time job to support extra cost associated with my education. I do not have an "easy" field of study. I study Biological Science with an emphasis on Cellular and Molecular Biology. This scholarship is the only reason that I was able, finacially, to go to school but each year the tuition is raised and it is proving to be overwelming. Another solution to the education budget cuts in Georgia must be made.
I realize this article was written nearly a year ago, so I won't be surprised if my comment is never read, but I feel compelled to write it nevertheless. The reason I came across this article is because I am a student at a GA university, studying journalism, writing an article on the HOPE scholarship. I'm also a recipient of the scholarship. I understand your feeling that HOPE creates pressure on students, because it does. But without that pressure on me, I don't know that I would have worked as hard to keep my 3.7 GPA. Knowing that I could cause my family financial hardship for being lazy only made me work harder. And as far as your comment about a hard-working student with a 2.9 and an underachieving one with a 3.0, that makes no sense. How can you tell by a .1 difference if the student works hard or not? Maybe a single class was harder for one than for the other. My real problem with this article is that you give no alternatives. If HOPE were gone tomorrow, I couldn't afford to fini
Why post if you do not have enough room to make your point?
My husband and I used the HOPE scholarship from 1996 - 1999. Before HOPE I only dreamed of going to school to better myself and my family. When HOPE begain, yes, it was sold to the voters as a way to give relief to parents and their children with money for college. Actually HOPE was a way to fund training programs for the under educated and under-employed. It was also to provide pre-K for Low income childern.
I fell into the catagory of under employed. Although we never took a penny of public assistance, I was not too proud to take this handup. Before I went to school, I was a minimum wage temp, who was told that I would never be anything. My Husband worked in a machine shop. He saw how much the maintenance techs made and decided that he wanted to have pay checks like they did. We made about 20K between the two of us.
The author says that people that take HOPE assistance do not take courses that are challenging.I went to school and I studied database programming and accounting
Excellent job!
In Texas we also have a state lottery that is supposed to help education. However, our schools are still always faced with budget problems even while the lottery grows bigger and bigger. So, where does that money go? I think it's a scam and a tax on the very poor. Good article.
Very well-written!
Good to see someone else questioning the logic of this system of 'funding' educational opportunities! Keep up the great writing!