Lottery scholarships awarded…sort-of (update below)
Posted by BKisida | Arkansas, Education, Politics | August 12, 2010
Little news so far, but apparently 25,000 scholarships will be given out, though 54,000+ applied. This whole thing continues to be a fiasco. Now less than half of the applicants finally get notification, with the start of the semester only days away, and another 30,000 are left wondering what they did wrong. I am hearing a lot of reports that most of those who did not get scholarships were non-traditional students. Many of those I am hearing from are very good students with high GPAs.
Did all of the eligible fresh-out-of-high-school kids with measly 2.5 GPAs or those who scored a 19 on their ACT get a scholarship, while high achieving current students were left out in the cold? I’ll say more when I manage to get all of the facts. Right now contacting anyone at the ADHE is impossible (as it has been for months).
UPDATE: Here is a press release I got from Lawrence Graves (communications officer at the ADHE). I bolded the important parts. Apparently, if a student currently in college was ever only a part-time student, then that student was categorized as a “non-traditional” student, even if they were full-time at the time of application. ALL of the applicants who qualified for the scholarship got a scholarship, EXCEPT those in the non-traditional category. I think the bottom line here is that Arkansas’ lawmakers screwed this up royally. Students who have been part-time in the past probably need the scholarship more than those that have always been full-time. Yet they are the ones getting short-changed. It appears that around 33,600 applicants fell into the non-traditional category, and around 30,000 of them were denied.
“Statement from the Director:
I’ll be working on a comprehensive overview of the lottery process including dollars and students awarded. Here is some preliminary information:We are glad to respond to specific questions and inquiries from the scholarship applicants if they have concerns. If an error has been made, we will rectify the situation. There are a lot of “moving parts” within the lottery act and related scholarship policies. We have not had time to quantify all of the reasons students were declined but many applicants who thought they would be “current achiever” students actually met the definition of “Nontraditional student” because they did not earn 12 hours or more for each of the semesters they were in college since high school. Failing to be considered in the current achiever category is the biggest surprise and frustration.
We anticipated that there would be about 30,000 students who would not receive the scholarship. There was never enough funds to fund all 53,000 applicants. The amount that are currently funded are relatively close to our budgeted numbers, although the number of students in the different categories are somewhat different than expected. As far as when we could have made the determination of the scholarships, it could be earlier but not substantially earlier. College students had to have their Spring semester grades sent in and from a logistical perspective they couldn’t arrive much earlier than they did (mid June). Students attend multiple institutions and all of those transcripts must be reviewed based upon the criteria. A College aggregate GPA had to be calculated and the number of college credits had to be counted. A review of each semester’s attendance records had to done to determine if the student was consistently a full-time student.Will we bring in more temporary workers earlier next year? Yes.
Here are the good points: There is no funding cap on traditional students (coming from high school). EVERY STUDENT WHO MEETS THE CRITERIA WILL BE GIVEN A SCHOLARSHIP. $41.3 million was budgeted for current achievers. EVERY STUDENT WHO MEETS THE CRITERIA WILL BE GIVEN A SCHOLARSHIP. $12 million was budgeted for nontraditional students. APPROXIMATELY 3,600 STUDENTS WILL BE FUNDED. Not all nontraditional students will be funded. A priority/ranking system is in place: 70% closeness to degree, 20% GPA, 10% high demand field of study.
State Triples Academic Challenge Scholarships We had 54,533 applications
A total of 25,445 students will receive the Academic Challenge scholarships next year.
This will triple the amount of students receiving the academic challenge scholarship from 8,282 last year.
There are 4 types of student receiving funding:
4,906 are students who were awarded the Academic challenge in previous years.
12,389 traditional students have been offered the awardOf the 36,697 nontraditional students:
4,550 met the Current achiever definition and were offered the scholarship3,600 will be offered the Nontraditional scholarship.
About 30,000 students will not be funded.”
As I read this, all of the students who could not afford to go to college full time upon graduation from high school, so they went to school part time while they worked part, will no be considered…well that is only a small percentage will be considered.
If this is correct, could those students who remain in college while they work part time be considered for the scholarships that the “traditional” students who drop out after a semester or a year leave behind?
How many bright students will be left to fend for themselves because they graduated high school before this lottery scholarship program was initiated?
The information they provided shows that they are not interested in funding higher education to all. Thank you Brian for actually getting a response from the department of higher education. I emailed and was forwarded to someone else in the department who hasn’t emailed me back. Anyway, let’s see there are 30,000 non-traditional students who are punished by either the arkansas legislature or the arkansas department of higher education for not being able to maintain a forty hour work week and keep full time status as a student.
Sounds like a member of the Duggar family either works in the legislature or the arkansas department of higher education. You know that’s a lot of children to educate. Anyway back on the subject, I need some people to help me out so we can have information of our own to represent our educational efforts as well. I am contacting every news outlet, the arkansas legislature, and the governor’s office to see why this injustice is happening. The Constitutional amendment does give the sole discretion to the Legislature to deem the appropriate way to pass out the money. Constitutional amendment # 3 on arkansas.gov website. So I guess the legislature is solely responsible for penalizing non-traditional excellent education achievers. They will put you in a different category for taking time off to make enough money to go back to school. Who says the legislature isn’t smart? They are smart enough to get their children’s education funded entirely off the backs of other hard working Arkansans who buy lottery tickets. They disenfranchised 30,000 non-traditional applicants so their children would have an absolute right to lottery scholarship money. Because their kids only have to make a 2.50 GPA. I have a 3.95 GPA in a technology field and was denied cause I was lumped into a category of people who instead of dropping out got a few more classes to maybe go into a different field or perhaps needed to get more hours at work or had a husband or wife who got layed off. Please lets unite against the state legislature and let them know this is just wrong and not what Arkansans voted for at all. I voted for the lottery, now i wish I hadn’t. I wonder if 30,000 and a few more signatures would be enough to repeal the lottery amendment.
Sorry, I apologize for not editing before posting. Please forgive me and read between the lines a few times.
My step-son who is a current achiever and a full-time student was denied. It was determined that the transcript that he mailed back in June has gone amiss at the Dept of Ed. so he was excluded for failure to verify his current full-time status at the University of Arkansas. He is re-sending his transcript. I would image there are others. The Department of Higher Education was helpful when contacted in identifying the problem. I believe it is true that non-traditional applicants probably make up the majority of those denied but I believe there are going to be several current achievers that will need to call and find out what happened as we did. Good luck getting in on their phone line as they have been inudated with calls.
Thanks for the tips Rick. I agree it is important for those who were denied to follow-up. I hope your son eventually gets his scholarship.
Also, as a State Rep, I urge you to look into the seemingly arbitrary method by which “current achievers” got awards and “non-traditional” students were largely denied. It doesn’t make sense that if a student was ever part-time that they should be punished. Why not simply revise the policy so that a student needs to be full-time on a going forward basis?
I recall Sen. Mary Anne Salmon was also trying to look out for current students back when these rules were defined. I was able to dig up that news article here:
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2009/oct/22/lamwkers-seek-changes-lottery-scholarships/
Basically, those of us already in college who would rather not take out any more student loans, and meet all requirements are basically out of luck…
Basically, those of us already in college who would rather not take out any more student loans, and meet all requirements are basically out of luck…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Arkansas-Lottery-Scholarship-went-to-people-that-dont-deserve-it/110360772351816
I am a “non-traditional student” who was denied one of these scholarships. I have a 3.9 GPA, have a critical need major, and five semesters to complete my degree. I applied for this on January 11, 2010, had all documentation submitted and verified by June 15, 2010, and was finally notified on August 11, 2010 that I would not receive any assistance. I would like to know exactly where I was on that list of applicants and what about the funding for the scholarship program that the Academic Challenge Scholarship replaced? Needless to say, I am very disappointed in this program already.
Rebecca,
I have asked the ADHE for more information about the ranking process. I ultimately hope to learn more details about the 30,000 students in the non-trad category who were denied, as well as learn more about the “current achiever” category.
Even without the data, though, it’s clear that there are thousands of people like you, with superb academic records, who lost out to “current achievers” with poorer records. That’s a shame. They might’ve better served students had they actually disbursed awards through a lottery, as it appears their decision rules were seriously mis-guided.
[...] are still unclear. I think that, based upon the numbers cited in the original press release (see my earlier post here) and the numbers cited in the Dem-Gaz (article here), it sounds like around 30,000 students who [...]
I have a 3.98 GPA, I am under 24, and I have attended college full time except for one summer semester where I was taking the last class to get my two year degree before I transferred. I am a year or less away from my degree
I am classified as a “non-traditional student”, but I’m not sure why. I’ve emailed ADHE and never got a response, but not too long after emailing I got an acceptance letter.
I’m happy that I got my scholarship, but this is really screwed up. I know colleges students with horrible GPAs that got the scholarship without a hitch who haven’t always taken full-time courses. This is a “SCHOLAR” ship and should be awarded to the most deserving first. Otherwise we should call it the Arkansas Lottery Grant.
I am entering my junior year at a private college here in Arkansas. I recently just transfered with my Associates of General Education. I had never recieved the Arkansas Challenge Scholarship before and I figured since I was in my Jr. year, my GPA was a 3.85, and I was going to go 16 hrs. this fall semester, that I would be able to recieve it. I am a non-traditional student. It took months before I recieved my e-mail stating that I would not recieve my Arkansas Challenge. Now that Im not able to get it I have to pull out a loan (my first loan ever). Im having to pull this loan out just ONE WEEK before school starts. I think it is crazy that there are high school students being awarded this scholarship with a lower GPA than me. Yes, I did only go 3 hours my final semester at my last college… this was because I only had one more class to take before I graduated. Hopefully I will reapply for the year 2011 – 2012 and recieve it, or I will yet again have to pull out a loan for the remaining semesters until I recieve my Bachelors.
I am a non-traditional delayed entry category student. I am told this is the category for those who did not go to college right after HS. I have an 85 Compass score average. That was used to determine my eligibility. I did not get a scholarship. I qualify for the Honors program at my school but no funding for me. I am told my Compass is roughly equivalent to a 31 on the ACT. 249 scholarships were awarded in my category. I have no clue how many applied or what their scores are. I am told I am wait listed today.
I look at the FOIA information and see nothing about a waiting list for delayed entry. Only Earn-In. The guy I spoke with on the phone was super helpful My application still had not even been matched to my HS transcript or test scores. He kept me on the phone and took care of it.
I applied 1/25/10. I don’t know if there is anything to be done. I am pretty sure if I had been evaluated I would have been awarded. My Compass scores are after all pretty good.
It stinks. Yet,for those who did get awarded it will be much better for some of our students this year. That is in fact a very good thing.
I have an EFC of 0 on My FAFSA and a need of over 20,000.00 I have been given a PELL and thats it at school. They have nothing else to give.
Still have not heard about the GO Grant either or Workforce Improvement. I will just have to figure it out.