University of Wyoming President Tom Buchanan encouraged a Senate committee Wednesday to set high standards for the state’s Hathaway Scholarship recipients.

The House recently voted to allow students who pass only basic classes required for high school graduation to have access to some scholarship funds, rejecting a proposal from a joint interim committee that called for limiting the scholarship in the future to students who complete a “success curriculum” that included specified math and science courses.

“Students who arrive at UW with challenging high school coursework, consistent with that proposed in the original Hathaway legislation, do better and are more likely to graduate than those with high GPAs based on less-challenging coursework,” Buchanan said. “We know with certainty that students benefit with parents or others challenging them to take rigorous coursework.”

Buchanan said most of this year’s freshman at UW received some form of Hathaway Scholarship, but that one out of four of those students was required to take remedial coursework in mathematics. Buchanan said those students could have taken certain math courses in high school and saved the state some money, had standards been higher.

By 2011, students will need to have completed a “success curriculum” to qualify for Hathaway. State lawmakers are currently debating which classes will make up the curriculum.

The House endorsed a proposal in which students who pass basic high school classes could receive up to $800 a semester, while those who take advanced math and science courses in high school, receive good grades and good scores on the ACT test could get up to $1,600 a semester.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Hank Coe, R-Cody, previously said he was very disappointed by the House’s actions and felt the House vote showed a lack of respect for the interim committee’s recommendations.

“Clearly if you look at North Carolina, Indiana and some of those other states out there, the driving factor for ACT performance, surviving in college and success in college is math,” Coe said. “For some reason that just sticks out every time you look at studies.”

Supporters of the House changes said generally that they believe the scholarship program should offer opportunities to students of varying levels of achievement.

The Senate Education Committee is hearing public testimony before voting on the bill.

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education News, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.