There seems to be a prevailing attitude in our Legislature, whether it is personal or politically driven, that increasing the number of students going to college in Arkansas is somehow a “good thing” for the state. Even this newspaper has championed the idea.
I submit that actually earning a college degree and the quality of the degree-not the number of students attending college-is the economic driver that would be most beneficial for the state and to the students fully capable of earning a degree in a field that would actually lead to substantive employment.
It is my opinion that a large number of this state’s citizens do not highly value education. One only has to turn on the TV or read the weekend newspaper and see that the lead news stories are most often sports-team-dominated, and by letters to the editor opposing suggestions that summer vacation be shorted so children can spend more time in school.
Arkansas voters did pass a lottery amendment to support higher education. I rather suspect that most voted for it simply to have a lottery. Okay, we have it, and profits are dedicated to scholarships. It is debated by many whether the lottery was a good thing. As we have now learned, the enthusiasm for betting has waned and, subsequently, revenue is down. What started as a $5,000-peryear award decreased to $4,500, and per the Arkansas Department of Higher Education’s web page, this school year it drops to $2,000 for freshmen, and will increase by $1,000 per year for those retaining their scholarships until it is back to $5,000. Of course, if revenue continues to drop, I suspect that these numbers will be revised.
To qualify for the scholarship, all a student has to attain is a 2.5 grade point average in “Smart Core” courses and a 2.75 overall GPA, plus a 19 on the ACT or a 900 combined on the SAT.
Folks, that is not scholarship! Grade inflation is well-documented. A 2.75 GPA is a C+. I submit that the typical high school graduate today with a 2.75 GPA could not pass a typical math, science, English or history test given to an eighth-grader of 50 years ago!
A 19 on the ACT is at the 40th percentile and a 900 combined score on the SAT is only the 3rd percentile. That means 60 percent of the students taking the ACT score higher than 19, and a whopping 97 percent of the students taking the SAT had a combined score higher than a 900. A 19 on the ACT and a 900 combined on the SAT is not demonstrative of scholarship! It is below average (50th percentile being “average”). Why have we set the bar so low?
If we truly want Arkansas to move forward and be highly competitive for really good-paying jobs, we must demand more of ourselves, our students, our teachers and professors. It has been reported many times in this paper that half of all incoming freshmen to our colleges and universities must take remedial courses in order to pass real college-level coursework. Why are we spending precious resources at the college level to even provide remedial courses?
The Legislature should pass a law similar to Texas when my children graduated there in the early ’90s. No remedial courses were given in Texas state colleges then. If a Texas high school graduate needed remedial work, he had go back to the high school he graduated from, and obtain it there at no cost to the student. That should be the law here if we are serious about holding our public schools accountable and if we are just as serious about providing economic opportunity to all Arkansans. (And the high school should not get additional funding to provide such remedial work.)
The lottery scholarship bar must be raised. I propose a 3.25 overall GPA, a 3.0 in the “Smart Core” courses, and at least a 24 on the ACT. A score of 24 would be at the 75th percentile. The corresponding composite SAT score would be a 1650. I would argue it should be the 90th percentile (a 28), but let’s at least require the student to be in the top 25 percent to get this funding.
The scholarship should be a full ride and not some arbitrary lump sum: all tuition, fees, room and board, and books. The student must maintain and pass their college courses at the 3.0 GPA (currently to continue to qualify, only a 2.5 cumulative GPA in college is required). I would keep the current semester-hour requirement of at least 12 hours the first freshman semester and 15 hours per semester thereafter. If the student fails to maintain these goals, the scholarship becomes a loan that must be repaid. If the student drops a course, there is no cash refund. The money would go back to the lottery.
Finally, it is my opinion that the lottery scholarship should go only to students majoring in degrees in the sciences, math, engineering, finance, and education, or with degree tracks where at least 80 percent of the graduates are employed within six months of graduation in the degree field at an annual salary at least 2.5 times the average yearly cost of their college education.
If enacted, these changes would be a huge step in moving Arkansas forward into a highly competitive world. Arkansas is a great place to live. Let’s give high-tech industry a reason to locate their facilities here. Let’s produce graduates with marketable degrees at truly good salaries.
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Joe T. Tucker of Cabot has a master’s degree in education and has taught math and chemistry.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 09/25/2013