by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A record number enrolled in Georgia’s public colleges and universities this fall as the state’s lottery continued to produce a windfall for academic scholarships, but a bipartisan legislative committee thinks too many students are still being left behind.
More than 2 million have received a HOPE Scholarship since the public lottery that funds them was established three decades ago.
To qualify, they had to graduate high school with at least a 3.0 grade point average. They also had to maintain their GPA in college to keep the money.
Many have slipped below that line, especially students from lower-income families. They must work while they take classes, leaving less time for studies. When they lose HOPE, they fall further behind, often failing to improve their grades enough to recover the scholarship. Many then drop out.
So, a state Senate committee adopted bipartisan recommendations this week calling for Georgia to provide financial aid based on need and not just merit, like 48 other states.
“This is about affordability and about opening doors,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, who led the study committee that concluded its work Tuesday.
Republicans joined Democrats to unanimously approve the final recommendations. Their report, released Wednesday, said Georgia should adopt a $126 million need-based financial aid program that could be funded from $1.7 billion in Georgia Lottery Corporation reserves.
Converting the recommendations into law could be a tough sell though.
Some are dubious about need-based financial aid, dimming prospects for such a measure in a General Assembly dominated by conservatives.
For instance, the Selig Center for Economic Growth, a business think tank at the University of Georgia, wrote in a 2019 report that need-based financial aid “sometimes has been cast negatively as a social welfare program.”
It said the state could face a shortage of skilled labor if nothing changes. A growing pool of highly skilled workers attracts employers that offer more skilled jobs, in a “virtuous cycle” of growth that the state should promote by spending more on financial aid, said the Selig Center report, which was co-authored by former UGA president Charles B. Knapp.
“Whatever views are held on this matter, the reality is that without a need-based financial aid program, Georgia is leaving potential economic growth on the table and shortchanging its citizens,” said the report, which was cited by Orrock’s committee.
But the HOPE Scholarship has produced a treasured legacy, and many lawmakers could be wary of drawing from its foundation in lottery funding.
On Monday, the day before Orrock’s committee approved its recommendations, Gov. Brian Kemp lauded HOPE, noting that more than 2.25 million students had received one of the scholarships in the past three decades. The announcement came as the Lottery Corp. surpassed $30 billion raised since its start, a portion of the proceeds paying for both pre-kindergarten and college.
“Since 1993, Georgia students from Pre-K to college have been set up for success through the programs funded by the lottery, expanding access to high-quality education in our state,” Kemp said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing that legacy of impact continue for years to come.”
On Wednesday, Gretchen Corbin, president and CEO of the Lottery Corp., said at a legislative hearing that the lottery returned $1.47 billion— a quarter of all proceeds — to education for the fiscal year that ended in July.
The money paid for HOPE and Zell Miller scholarships and also subsidized pre-kindergarten attendance, helping to drive enrollment in both.
Sonny Perdue, a former Republican Georgia governor and now the chancellor of the state university system, told lawmakers at a hearing last month that a record-breaking 382,000 enrolled this fall, surpassing projections of 379,500 by 2029.
“So, we are really beating the numbers,” Perdue said.
But the premise of Orrock’s committee is that Georgia could be enrolling even more students if they could afford college. Four-year college recipients of the Pell grant, a federal subsidy for students from low-income households, had an average $11,883 in unmet need in 2020, Orrock’s committee report said. That was a few thousand dollars more than the funding gap for all four-year students.
Kamore Campbell, who was a high school salutatorian, told the committee that he had received Pell and Zell funding, yet he still left the state for college.
“There were no public four-year schools that offered me enough aid to make staying in state affordable,” Campbell said. He had wanted to attend Georgia Southern University but had a $10,000 gap. “I enrolled at American University and left Georgia,” he said.
Ray Li, a lawyer with the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice group, told the committee that Georgia is suffering a “brain drain” as talented students find better deals in other states and never return to contribute to Georgia’s economy.
Georgia has the lowest home state college attendance in the region, he said, with 78% of high school graduates staying here.
Compare that to 91% in Mississippi, 86% in Florida and 85% in South Carolina, he said. “We are losing a ton of students simply because they cannot afford to go to college here.”
