The first three years of lottery-funded scholarships have helped the growth-driven University of Arkansas expand its undergraduate enrollment, particularly freshmen, officials said.
“Our traditional freshman numbers were steady for years,” said Suzanne McCray, the Fayetteville campus’s vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions. “And then we have the lottery come along, and there’s a spike.”
UA’s new classes of firsttime, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen increased about 30 percent over the past three years.
“We think it’s in large part due to the lottery,” McCray said.
The effect on all undergraduate students was apparent as well, she said. By fall 2012, as the third year of lottery-funded scholarships got underway, UA-Fayetteville topped 20,000 undergraduates for the first time ever, going from 15,835 in fall 2009 to 20,350 in 2012.
“That’s pretty striking,”she said, given that the university’s overall enrollment had topped 20,000 students for the first time only two years earlier, when 21,405 undergraduate, graduate and law students enrolled in fall 2010.
ENROLLMENT GROWTH
The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery began Sept. 8, 2009, and it began funding scholarships in fall 2010.
The lottery scholarships were rolled into an existing statewide scholarship program called the Arkansas Academic Challenge.
In one year, the lottery took the prog ram from funding nearly 8,300 students to more than 30,000 students in fall 2010, according to past Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
The program awarded 31,131 scholarships in 2010-11 , 31 , 109 in 2011-12 and 33,070 in 2012-13, said Brandi Hinkle, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
According to figures provided by Shane Broadway, the department’s interim director, the lottery raised about $326 million for the first three years of scholarships. When combined with $20 million per year from general state appropriations, the program received about $386 million.
The lottery-funded scholarships’ effects on enrollment growth don’t appear to be evenly spread among the state’s universities. However, the schools have tracked new students differently, and the merger of lottery scholarships with the existing statewide scholarship program make it difficult to single out the lottery’s effect.
For instance, at another of the state’s research universities, Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, the lottery scholarships haven’t caused a noticeable increase in enrollment, said Rick Stripling, ASU’s vice chancellor for student affairs.
“I don’t think we’ve seen any significant or marginal impact on enrollment,” Stripling said. “For us, we just really haven’t seen anything that we can say is directly a result of the lottery.”
At UA-Fayetteville, administrators have been in recruitment mode for more than a decade to reach enrollment goals. Those include recruiting more people from minority groups and more male or female students to fields where their gender has been in short supply.
Although UA officials can’t say precisely how many students enroll because of a lottery scholarship, it’s easy for the Fayetteville campus to separate the effects of the lottery from those of the recession, Mc-Cray said.
“What motivates a student? It’s hard to say. But finally, there was enough money to come,” she said.
Recessions tend to affect graduate students and nontraditional students, not new freshmen, she said.
“Those students are pretty recession-proof,” McCray said.
The lottery-enhanced Academic Challenge awards are partial scholarships. Nonetheless, the lottery money has allowed UA to further goals such as recruiting more low-income and first-generation college students, she said.
“The lottery increased the number of students we were able to recruit who are on Pell,” McCray said of the federal student grant program, noting that 25 percent of the 2012 freshman class was helped by Pell grants.
Although more than a quarter of the UA freshman class last year was made up of first-generation college students, or students who were the first in their family to attend college, its academic quality did not drop. In fall 2012, UA had a record number of students with a 3.75 grade point average or higher, McCray said.
During the lottery’s first three years, freshman enrollment by those in minority groups grew 24 percent, while it grew 19 percent for whites, she said.
The minority figure includes 30 percent growth in black enrollment, 45 percent for Hispanics and 18 percent for Asians during the past three years.
CHARTING SUCCESS
The state is still a year away from seeing the full effects the lottery scholarship funds have had on universities’ and two-year colleges’ ability to retain and graduate students, Broadway said.
That’s because students who were freshmen in fall 2010 and received lottery scholarships are about to begin their senior years, he said. The scholarship’s progress requirements keep most students on track to graduate within four years.
Broadway said the Higher Education Department doesn’t have aggregate numbers on whether the Academic Challenge students are staying in school and graduating.
The department, however, did have a report comparing how the applicants fared between the 2011-12 academic year and 2012-13.
The report showed that UA-Fayetteville’s 5,724 applicants had a 79 percent “success rate” in the 2012-13 school year, Hinkle said. That includes 63 percent who renewed their scholarships and 16 percent who “completed,” meaning they earned a degree or completed a certificate.
Because students can qualify for Academic Challenge after the first year, the success rate doesn’t track with the graduation rates, which are calculated from new, first-time freshmen. The graduation rate also could penalize schools that have fewer certificate programs, which students can complete in a year.
ASU’s success rate for its 3,434 applicants during that year was 82 percent, with 63 percent renewing and 19 percent completing, according to the report.
The University of Central Arkansas’ 3,836 applicants had a 79 percent success rate. The Conway campus had 61 percent of students renewing and 18 percent completing.
At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 74 percent of its 1,986 applicants were deemed successful, with 55 percent renewing and 19 percent completing.
The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff had 393 applicants, with a 74 percent success rate. Of those, 52 percent renewed and 22 percent completed.
AWARDS LOWERED
As of May 9, eligibility requirements for the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship included being an Arkansas resident who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, according to a fact sheet from the department.
In addition, students must have either a minimum high school GPA of 2.5 or an ACT score of at least 19.
Once enrolled at an Arkansas college or university, students must meet a number of requirements for minimum GPA and credit-hour completion to keep their scholarships. For freshmen who are taking remedial coursework, they must complete the courses within their first 30 credit hours.
Those familiar with the scholarships wonder what effect they’ve had on keeping students from going to schools out of state. Other questions include whether the new lottery money allowed students bound for two-year colleges to choosefour-year universities, and whether four-year students opted for a larger or more expensive school, such as UA-Fayetteville.
However, officials said they don’t have data to answer those questions, and the lottery awards are about to change.
The Academic Challenge awards for freshmen had decreased to $4,500 from $5,000, and starting this fall will be lowered to $2,000, with awards for four-year students in succeeding years gradually rising.
Legislators changed the amount of the awards because lottery proceeds didn’t meet earlier expectations. The increasing tier of award amounts provides an incentive for students to persist and graduate.
Starting this fall, incoming freshmen at four-year universities and two-year colleges will get $2,000 combined for fall and spring terms.
Four-year students who maintain the scholarship will then get $3,000 in their sophomore year, $4,000 as juniors and $5,000 as seniors.
For two-year students, the award remains at $2,000 in the second year.
McCray said she thinks the lower award will bring a small drop in the number of students in this fall’s freshman class.
McCray said she’s heard some people say the identical award amounts for universities and the two-year colleges will drive more students back to starting their studies at two-year institutions.
In the past, “When students had the money … many more than predicted chose the four-year schools,” she said.
McCray said she worries that the drop from $4,500 to $2,000 will mean a loss of Pell grant recipients and first-generation students, but the effects remain to be seen.
“In the poorer areas of our state, $2,500 can make or break a student’s decision in whether they get to go to school or not - or where they go,” McCray said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 08/11/2013