Scholarship Need May Be Required

For years, state leaders have contemplated making the college Lottery Scholarship program needs- or merit-based. With the program now facing a multi-million dollar deficit, that could become a reality.

Sen. Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, acknowledged Tuesday that his long-held stance that the scholarship should be available to all New Mexican students, regardless of financial need or academic accomplishments, might have to change.

Making the scholarship needs-based “may be something that has to happen in the end,” Sanchez said at a summit organized by University of New Mexico student leaders.

Sanchez, who helped draft the bill creating the program in 1996, said he would oppose making the scholarship merit-based, using himself as an example of a student who didn’t perform well in high school but went on to graduate from UNM.

“I don’t think a student like me should be deprived,” he said.

Sanchez, along with Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, and Higher Education Department Secretary José Garcia, were among several speakers at the summit in the university’s Student Union Building.

Sunny Liu, vice president of the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico, differed from Sanchez’s position.

He said aid allocation should be performance-based, and that leaders should focus on better-preparing students for college while they’re still in K-12.

“But if we’re going to invest in students who are not able to succeed and we are setting them up for a disaster, it’s a bad investment,” Liu said.

Among the topics discussed was the connection between student success and the scholarship. Nearly 58 percent of UNM students who receive lottery aid graduate in six years, compared to the school average of about 45 percent. But data gathered by New Mexico State University also show that higher-performing and better-prepared students are more likely to graduate than others, regardless of whether they get the scholarship.

More than half of lottery recipients come from families with $100,000 or higher incomes, while only 30 percent of come from families that make $20,000-$39,999 annually.

“That seems a little bit backwards,” Garcia said.

If the program isn’t infused with new funds, the amount that the lottery scholarship covers for each student could be cut as soon as 2014, Garcia said. About 75,300 New Mexican students have received the scholarship since it began 16 years ago. The scholarship pays 100 percent of tuition to a public New Mexico school for eight consecutive semesters, as long as students maintain a minimum 2.5 GPA. But that could change to 60 or 65 percent of tuition if the program cannot find more money, Garcia said.

Lagging lottery ticket sales — 30 percent of which are allocated to the scholarship fund — along with tuition increases, have left the program nearly insolvent. The fund has a projected gap of more than $5 million by fiscal year 2014, which begins next July.

More than 8,700 UNM students were scholarship recipients in 2011-2012, UNM associate vice president for enrollment management Terry Babbitt said. Of those, only 35 percent are also eligible for Pell grants.

That means if the state were to make the lottery scholarship available based on financial need, with requirements similar to the Pell grant, more than 5,600 students would be left out.

“From the UNM perspective there’s not a clear way that’s better for our students …” Babbitt said.

But students who attended the summit mostly expressed support for making the program either needs-based or merit-based. For example, students could be required to have a 3.0 GPA instead of 2.5. One student suggested requiring applicants to write an essay on why they want the aid.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal