Standards could be lowered for students with the HOPE Lottery Scholarship. The Tennessee Legislature is expected to look at the qualifiers.
Memphis City Schools are lobbying for the standards to be lowered as well.
A recent study shows half of college students lost their Hope Lottery Scholarships after their first year. That number now has some questioning if the standards are too high.

“Last semester I had 2 A’s, 2 B’s and 2 C’s”, Desiree Bledsoe says. But the U of M nursing student still finds herself studying on Sunday. Last semester’ s GPA was just barely enough for her to keep the 3.0 overall average she needs to retain her Hope Lottery Scholarship.

With about two-thirds of students losing their scholarship within two years, Bledsoe says it’s tough to keep the scholarship, “My best friend just lost hers and she had a 2.999 and to me that was crazy and she was an organic chemistry major”.

Right now students are required to keep a 2.75 GPA the first year of the Hope scholarship and a 3.0 each year after. But, the average GPA for a U of M undergraduate is reportedly a 2.82.

Kenneth Whalum with the Memphis City School Board says, “I think a 3.0 is too high for the average college student to maintain a scholarship”.

The Tennessee State Legislature is expected to consider lowering qualifications for the lottery scholarships. Whalum says the district is sending a lobbyist to Nashville this month to try to sway them. He says, ” I think we should be realistic and stop trying to be so dead set on maintaining realistic scholarship goals and lower them so more people can get the benefit of the scholarship”.

But, like the lottery, one student we talked with says lowering standards means there may be more losers than winners. Domaine De Valier says, “With only a 30-percent higher education rate it’s not looking good in comparison to other countries in the world”.

Whalum says, “I’m not against standards I’m against throwing out standards and not giving them help to reach the standards”. Whalum also suggests taking excess lottery funds and using them to tutor those who have the scholarship.

Lawmakers filed for a bill introducing revised legislation on Friday.

Source: www.myfoxmemphis.com

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:18 am and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education News, Scholarship, Student, Study, . 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.