Arkansas students banking on future lottery scholarships should lower their expectations.
State lawmakers learned recently that the size of those scholarships may have to drop substantially for future recipients.
The lottery just isn’t paying oft as predicted.
For whatever reason, people who buy lottery tickets aren’t shelling out as many bucks for the draw games or for scratch tickets.
The fewer dollars in, the fewer dollars available to run the statewide operation and the fewer dollars left over to fund the state scholarship program.
Students who were lucky enough to participate in the first round of scholarships qualified for $5,000 a year for each year the student remained in a four-year school. Students in two-year schools got $2,500 annually in that fi rst round.
But lawmakers soon learned they couldn’t keep that up. They reduced the amount of the awards to $4,500 and $2,250, respectively.
Now they’re looking at bigger cuts or making it tougher to qualify or altering the system to pay difterent annual amounts as a student progresses toward a degree.
Shane Broadway, interim director of the HigherEducation Department, told legislators last week that, if the program is kept as is, the state can expect to pay out more money than the lottery is raising and would wipe out a $20 million contingency fund in the department.
He told the Legislative Lottery Oversight Committee that, to stay in the black, the annual scholarship levels would have to be reduced to $3,300 for four-year students and $1,650 for two-year recipients.
That’s not the only option, as noted earlier.
What state lawmakers wanted to do from the getgo was to make as much money available as possible to every qualifi ed graduating high school senior to get them into college and on the road to a more productive life.
It was good for the students and it was good politics, allowing lawmakers to claim credit for bringing money home to a lot of Arkansas families.
The program has definitely helped a lot ofstudents go to college, awarding nearly 65,000 scholarships so far. Some of the state institutions have consequently seen their enrollments swell with incoming freshmen.
Unfortunately, not all have been able to stay in school, which has caused lawmakers to talk about raising qualifications for the scholarships. The aim of any changes would be to get the money to students who are more likely to complete their degrees.
Another option is to alter the amount of the scholarships, rewarding students for staying in school.
One specifi c proposal has been suggested by state Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain View, one of the cochairmen of the oversight panel.
Key’s idea is to award freshmen $2,000, adding $1,000 to the amount for each year the student is in school. The scholarship would top out at $5,000 in a student’s senior year. That’s $14,000 over four years (or $6,000 less than the fi rst recipients got over four years and $4,000 less than current levels).
Broadway crunched those numbers, too, and told lawmakers the state could aftord such a tiered system.
What the incoming Legislature will do to resolve the situation is anybody’s guess. Lawmakerswill have to make the falling revenue match up with money going out to students.
For the record, Bishop Woosley, director of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, reported that sales were down for the fi rst four months of the fi scal year.
If the trend continues, that would be about 10 percent below the $98 million that has been projected.
He said the economy, the drought and high gas prices all contributed to lagging sales. Plus, the initial buzz has worn oft the lottery, which has now been around since September 2009.
There is a momentary surge going on as the Powerball jackpot has risen to a record level. The $500 million jackpot for this week’s Wednesday draw is the largest in Powerball’s history and has prompted many more people to buy the $2 ticket.
The size of the jackpot will keep rising until someone cashes in. While the Arkansas lottery folks are certainly doing their part to promote sales of Powerball tickets and other products, even a record jackpot is not likely to help the Legislature avoid an overhaul of the scholarship program.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/28/2012