For the daughter of carpet mill workers, growing up in rural Ringgold in North Georgia, college seemed a remote possibility for me financially. My parents always pushed me to work hard, but they were worried about paying the rent and making sure my brother and I had dinner on the table. For me, the HOPE scholarship and other financial aid was a lifeline.
After many late nights of studying, my 3.8 GPA earned me a HOPE scholarship and admission to the University of Georgia. But I didn’t stop working. I continued staying up late — this time to waitress to supplement my financial aid — and waking up early to study.
My story has a happy ending: I became my family’s first college graduate, went on to law school and now mentor students through the hurdles of the college-admissions process. I have seen too many students who struggle in situations even I could have never imagined.
These are students such as Atlanta teen Marlanna, who missed the SAT several times because her mother did not have transportation to drive her daughter to the test. Everything from filling out applications online when you don’t have a computer, to obtaining immunization records and ordering transcripts are harder when you don’t have the financial resources or someone in your family who has been through it before. And that’s before you even get a tuition bill.
This last legislative session, the HOPE “reform” measures placed yet another hurdle in front of low-income students. In response to declining lottery revenues, the HOPE scholarship program has changed. It is now more difficult to obtain a scholarship, and those who do receive a smaller reward.
That means thousands of students will delay college or not go at all as the dollars available for the HOPE scholarship continue to deteriorate. Other current recipients may have to drop out and possibly even be in default because of a decline in their education funds. And the situation is only expected to get worse.
By fiscal 2013, the state is expected to wipe through reserves available for scholarships and be expected to make even larger cuts to HOPE. This is why it is essential that Georgia consider all new revenue sources. Like others, I need more time to consider whether video lottery terminals in a centralized location are the best option. But it is an option that should be considered. It is discouraging to know that some have immediately dismissed the idea before it can even be studied.
HOPE was created to make college a possibility for more students. If you grow up in a family with a household income of less than $36,000 a year, you have a less than 5 percent chance of going to college. But if you grow up in a family with a household income of more than $95,000 a year, you have more than a 75 percent chance.
HOPE was intended to change these odds so that your family didn’t determine whether you went to college. Georgia will not climb the economic charts by continuing to simply send children of college graduates to college — that is already done. We need more first-generation college students.
HOPE helps us achieve that goal because it makes college more affordable. But now that HOPE has been slashed and will continue to deteriorate over time, the program’s goals are lost.
We need to spread a message of hope to students who need our help, not place another hurdle in their way. We need to show students that we will not close our minds to new ways to fund their education — even if those ideas are different than the way we are used to doing things.
It is a new way of thinking that brought us the HOPE scholarship and that has helped so many first-generation college graduates. And I hope that Georgia is open-minded enough to realize that the HOPE scholarship is now in need of its own lifeline.
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Smyrna, represents House District 40 and is a partner in the law firm of Wood, Hernacki & Evans LLC.
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