Second Chances Yield Better Odds

Scholarships To ‘Nontraditional’ Students Succeed More, Figures Show

Jonathan Noble sits at a computer in the computer lab at the University of Arkansas student union Feb. 5 after a class. When handing out lottery scholarships, the state puts a cap on the number of nontraditional students who may receive them, despite the fact that those students are considerably more successful at finishing college than their traditional counterparts.
Jonathan Noble sits at a computer in the computer lab at the University of Arkansas student union Feb. 5 after a class. When handing out lottery scholarships, the state puts a cap on the number of nontraditional students who may receive them, despite the fact that those students are considerably more successful at finishing college than their traditional counterparts.

— College students who are most likely to succeed in school get the least amount of help from the statewide lottery scholarships, according to state figures.

The higher success rate of older students who return to college from the work force is now a factor in debate over scholarship spending. The amount of money available for the scholarships is down from earlier peaks, forcing new decisions on how the money should be spent.

Voters approved a statewide lottery in 2008. The lottery typically raises nearly $100 million per year for scholarships. The state places a $12 million yearly cap on lottery scholarship awards to nontraditional students — those who do not start college the fall semester immediately after finishing high school.

But nontraditional students perform better than their traditional classmates, according to statistics from the state Department of Higher Education. About 80 percent of nontraditional students who received a lottery scholarship meet the academic standards to keep their scholarships in their second year of college. About 60 percent of traditional students are retained through the scholarship program in their second year, according to department figures, either because they don’t meet the academic requirements or because they drop out of school.

At A Glance

Older Students

The University of Arkansas enrolled 20,350 undergraduate students during the fall 2012 semester. Of those, 2,242 students, or 11 percent, were 25 or older, according to Steve Voorhies, university spokesman. The university does not track how many of its students fit the lottery’s definition of a nontraditional student, which is someone who starts college one year or later after graduating high school.

Source: University Of Arkansas

Put another way, less than one in five nontraditional students getting a lottery scholarship lose the scholarship or fail to graduate. The same figure for traditional students is two out of five.

As of September there were 1,600 nontraditional students on a waiting list for lottery scholarships.

“They may have married. They are more mature. They know more what they want to do,” Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, said of nontraditional students. “They’re potentially more committed, and they potentially know they are really going to have to buckle down and work hard to stay in school.”

A bill that gained House Education Committee approval Wednesday would increase the amount of money for nontraditional student scholarships to $16 million a year while reducing the amount of scholarships to bring costs in line with revenue.

There are 32,829 college students in Arkansas receiving lottery scholarships this semester, including 3,642 students the lottery considers nontraditional, according to the Higher Education Department.

Ralph Nesson, who served as director of the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund for 22 years before stepping down last year, believes more lottery proceeds should be granted to the nontraditional students.

“If our goal, as Gov. (Mike) Beebe has suggested, is to have more college graduates in Arkansas, we’d be betting on the people with the track record,” Nesson said. “I don’t think there’s enough financial aid aimed at that group of people.”

Nesson said figures from the Single Parent Scholarship Fund demonstrate nontraditional students are a good investment. Eighty-two percent of beneficiaries of the fund remained in school or graduated the following year in 2011, he said. Most recipients are mothers between the ages of 20 and 35.

“It’s a remarkable success rate among these students, and it’s been very consistent over the past 10 to 15 years,” he said.

Shane Broadway, Higher Education director, said his priority is keeping the scholarship program financially viable.

“If you do raise that cap, it will likely lessen the award amounts for all, because you have to take it from somewhere,” he said.

Suzanne McCray, vice provost for enrollment management and dean of admissions at the University of Arkansas, said the scholarship issue is complex. If money is removed from traditional students, she said, some won’t be able to afford college, thus delaying their march toward a degree.

“It’s a very, very tough situation,” McCray said. “They know they’re going to have to cut funds and where do you do that? It’s hard to add to another group without penalizing others.”

It’s important that students getting a shot at college for the first time continue to be supported at the same scholarship rate, McCray said. “Otherwise we’re not going to accomplish our goal of getting more baccalaureate degrees in the state,” she said.

Why A Cap?

During the 2008 campaign to pass the lottery, supporters touted the scholarships as being only for students coming straight out of high school, Broadway said. That understanding carried through the 2009 legislative session, when legislators set up the lottery.

After the lottery launched, but before the first scholarships were awarded, it became clear the state would have more than enough money to fund scholarships for the traditional students. That held true during the lottery’s early years, which later proved to be the peak of lottery collections.

“Legislators started getting calls from college students saying, ‘Why can’t we get any of that money?’” Broadway said. “So the decision was made to apply money to students who were in college at the time, and to nontraditional students.”

In 2010, the Legislature established a rule that would make at least $12 million available to nontraditional students. That $12 million floor was changed to a ceiling in 2011, when the Legislature decided to scale back award levels by $500 for four-year students and $250 for two-year students.

Arkansas has the only state lottery in the country that dedicates all of its proceeds to college scholarships.

“To my knowledge, Arkansas is the only state that sets aside any funding from lottery proceeds to nontraditional students,” Broadway said.

Bill Advancing

Lottery revenue has dropped while more people took advantage of the program than expected. Students also opted for the more-expensive scholarships to four-year schools than planned. These factors made the amounts awarded in scholarships unsustainable. Legislators are weighing changes to the formula — currently $4,500 for four-year students and $2,250 for two-year students annually.

House Bill 1295, filed last week, proposes a tiered formula whereby freshmen at four-year schools would receive $2,000; sophomores would receive $3,000; juniors would receive $4,000; and seniors would receive $5,000. Students at two-year schools would receive $2,000 both years. The measure also would increase scholarship money available for nontraditional students from $12 million to $16 million.

Opinions on the bill are mixed among higher education officials.

Becky Paneitz, president of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, said the college supports the bill, including the proposal to raise the cap on nontraditionals.

“Raising the cap is a plus for community colleges, but more importantly, it’s a positive for the students,” Paneitz wrote in an email last week. “Some of our nontraditional students have told me that they began college with every intention of completing their four-year degree, and then life happened and they had to quit because of finances, work circumstances or family situations. To be able to receive nontraditional scholarship dollars truly provides them a second chance at education.”

Arkansas’ Independent Colleges & Universities, an organization representing 11 schools in the state including John Brown University in Siloam Springs, has not taken a position on the funding for nontraditional students, said Rex Nelson, the organization’s president. Most of the students in those schools are traditional students.

The organization is concerned about House Bill 1295 because it slashes so much from funding for students at four-year schools and treats them the same as students at two-year schools, Nelson said.

“Countless studies have shown that students who start at four-year schools are much more likely to obtain at least a bachelor’s degree than those who start at two-year schools,” Nelson said.

“Gov. Beebe has set a goal of doubling the number of college graduates in the state by 2025. Right now, we seem to be moving in the wrong direction from a public policy standpoint.”

Nontraditional Perspectives

Jonathan Noble tried college right after he graduated from high school. It didn’t work. He went back a second time, then a third time, all before he turned 22. In each of those three attempts at higher education, he lasted no more than two semesters before dropping out.

Then, after years of working at a paper mill in Crossett, Noble began to wish for something more. He started at NorthWest Arkansas Community College in 2011 before transferring to the University of Arkansas, where he’s studying history and political science with aspirations of being a teacher. He made the chancellor’s list last fall, his first semester there.

Noble, 37, lives in Farmington with his wife and three children.

“I’ve got these kids, and I want to be a good example for them,” he said.

Reflecting on his past failures at college, he said a lack of confidence hurt him.

“The me of 20 years ago didn’t have any clue that he could really accomplish anything,” Noble said. “I would always let other people do stuff for me. When it came time to get something done for myself, I wasn’t prepared.”

He does not receive a lottery scholarship, though he said he has applied for one.

About the cap on nontraditional students, he said he doesn’t know what’s fair.

“I feel a nontraditional student would be less of a risk,” he said. “But at the same time, you want to encourage as many young folks as you can to get an education right after high school, and they might not be able to afford it without the scholarship.”

Lisa Ann Baker, 50, lives in Eureka Springs and attends the University of Arkansas, where she’s pursuing a degree in early childhood education. She expects to earn her bachelor’s in May.

As a young adult, she didn’t see the point of going to college, Baker said. She had decent jobs, first as a home health assistant, and later as an interior decorator. Years later she found herself a single mother of three children.

“I thought if I was going to get beyond a menial job, I was going to have to go back to school,” she said.

With age, she said, she’s learned the value of an education.

“Now, I’m extremely focused,” Baker said. “I understand the cost of education and the benefits of education. It’s a different perspective. When you’re 19 or 20 years old, you don’t really see the value of it. And if you have to pay for the education yourself, you definitely do.”

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