Bill takes aim at scholarships

At lottery oversight meeting, legislator urges tighter rules

State Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, proposed legislation Friday to stiffen the requirements for high school graduates to receive Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships.

Hickey said there is a wide range of opinions about the scholarship program’s requirements in the Legislature.

“What I have learned since I started working on this in early summer is there are 135 of us down here, and I wish that there was just 135 opinions that relate to this. What I found is we actually have three, four or five apiece,” he told the Legislature’s lottery oversight committee as he presented the bill to a handful of lawmakers at the end of their meeting, none of whom asked questions about it.

“This is not a feel-goodtype bill,” he said, adding that the bill is aimed at fixing the scholarship program’s cashflow problem in a compassionate way.

The lottery is projected to raise $78 million for scholarships this fiscal year, Hickey said, and the state also will contribute $20 million in general revenue. The state Department of Higher Education is projecting it will hand out $102 million, he said.

The department occasionally taps a $20 million lottery reserve account to cover shortfalls in funding for the scholarships, then later replenishes the account after it receives more net proceeds from the lottery, he said.

Last school year, first-time recipients of the scholarship started getting $2,000 as freshmen, $3,000 as sophomores, $4,000 as juniors and $5,000 as seniors at four-year universities under Act 235.

New scholarship recipients at two-year colleges get $2,000 a year for both years.

Those who were first awarded the scholarships in

the 2011-12 or 2012-13 school years each continue to get $4,500 a year at universities and $2,250 at two-year colleges.

To get the scholarship, Arkansas high school graduates are required to have at least a 2.5 grade-point average or score at least a 19 on the ACT college admissions exam or an equivalent score on a comparable college entrance exam.

Under Hickey’s proposal, starting in the 2016-17 school year, high school graduates would be required to have at least a 3.25 grade-point average and score at least a 22 on the ACT or an equivalent score on a comparable college entrance exam in order to get the scholarship at the start of the school year.

State high school graduates with at least a 2.5 grade-point average but less than 3.25 and at least a 19 on the ACT but less than 22 would receive their scholarship award at the end of a successfully completed year of college, starting in the 2016-17 school year.

“That means they would be basically getting a reimbursement after successful completion, and then they would also be receiving future award amounts,” he said. “By doing this, the bill will help cash flow by saving us $2,000 for each student that hasn’t completed the qualifications of the program the first year.”

The number of ACT-tested Arkansas high school graduates in 2014 who scored a 19, 20, 21 or 22 composite score on the ACT was 7,818 out of 26,821 tested, said Ed Colby, director of public relations for the ACT.

That’s 29 percent of all ACT-tested graduates in the state, he said, adding that 93 percent of all Arkansas graduates in 2014 took the ACT.

Hickey’s proposal would create a new scholarship for high school graduates with at least a 2.5 grade-point average and a score of at least 19 on the ACT or an equivalent score on a comparable entrance exam who enroll in a certificate of proficiency program or technical certificate program.

They would receive a $750 scholarship at the start of the semester in which they are enrolled. That would save the state $1,250 per student because it wouldn’t be paying for a $2,000 scholarship instead, Hickey said.

“We accomplish all of this by not reducing the dollar amount of scholarships currently available,” Hickey said. “We are still providing an avenue for all the same students to qualify and we provide an additional scholarship for a career path for students that is not currently available.”

He said his bill is intended to provide financial stability to the scholarship program, and “our intent is increasing the scholarship amounts beginning in the second year of enrollment for successful students once we have stabilized the lottery.”

Hickey said that 76 percent of the scholarship recipients at the state’s colleges and universities in the 2012-13 academic year didn’t retain the scholarship in their first year after graduating from high school with a grade-point average between 2.5 and 2.74, based on the state Department of Higher Education figures.

He said that 68 percent of the scholarship recipients who graduated from high school with between 2.75 and 2.99 grade-point averages didn’t keep the scholarship in the first year after graduation.

And 54 percent of 2012-13 recipients with high school grade-point averages between 3.0 and 3.24 failed to retain the scholarship, the legislator said.

Statistically, Hispanic and Asian students with gradepoint averages between 2.5 and 3.24 were the least likely to lose the scholarship after the first year, according to Hickey. Based on the Higher Education Department figures, 61 percent of Hispanic students and 62 percent of Asian students didn’t retain the scholarship.

Among other groups, 71 percent of Indian students, 67 percent of black students and 64 percent of white students lost the scholarships in the first year, Hickey said.

Committee Co-chairman Rep. Mark Perry, D-Jacksonville, said Friday night that he hasn’t had time to review the bill to have an opinion about it.

Shane Broadway, director of the state Department of Higher Education, informed college and university presidents about Hickey’s legislation in an email on Thursday afternoon.

“I am certain there will be a great deal of discussion, and we are running the numbers to determine what impacts there would be with the proposed change,” he wrote in his email.

A spokesman for the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville referred a reporter’s question about UA’s opinion of the bill to a spokesman for the UA System, which declined comment on it. ASU System President Charles Welch said he hasn’t had a chance to look at the bill.

More than 30,000 students have received the scholarship during each of the past four years.

The Legislature has twice cut the size of the scholarships during this period, citing more students than projected receiving the scholarship and lottery proceeds lagging behind initial projections.