To shore up enrollment, UA sustains award effort

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville is continuing a scholarship effort that it hopes will reverse a freshman enrollment decline that UA's top admissions official attributes to the state's reduced award amounts for lottery scholarships.

On the basis of housing contracts for this fall, the university expects about 200 more Arkansas freshmen than last year, said Suzanne McCray, UA's vice provost for enrollment management and dean of admissions.

In addition to describing UA aid efforts -- which involved lowering standards for one freshman scholarship -- McCray said it was "nice" to have a year without dramatic changes in award amounts.

"Having enough time to prepare is so helpful to the students," McCray said.

Students were hit last year with sudden cuts reducing award amounts for lottery scholarships. The freshman class at UA dropped to 4,339 last fall compared with 4,574 a year earlier.

"The students we lost were from Arkansas," McCray said, with the 235 fewer in-state freshmen matching the total decrease in freshman enrollment overall.

Roughly half of last year's freshman class came from in state.

Not only did lottery award amounts for freshmen at four-year schools drop to $2,000 from $4,500 beginning with the 2013-14 school year, but the February 2013 legislative change in the amounts also was late for students.

"We think it had a very direct effect, mainly because students found out about it so late in the decision-making process," said McCray about UA-Fayetteville, the state's largest university, where tuition and fees for the coming year will rise 5 percent to $8,209 for in-state students taking a full load of 30 credit hours.

It's not known yet how many lottery scholarships will be awarded by the state beginning this fall, but last year 35,212 scholarships were given out to students at Arkansas' colleges and universities, including $2,000 awards available to students enrolling in two-year colleges. The scholarships were first offered for the 2010-11 school year.

For students going to four-year schools, lottery scholarship amounts increase by $1,000 each subsequent academic year so long as students meet minimum academic requirements. Under this tiered system, a qualifying student would receive $3,000 as a sophomore, $4,000 as a junior and $5,000 as a senior.

Colleges and universities reacted differently to cuts in lottery awards and have had to decide this year whether to continue aid strategies.

Some provided new stopgap scholarships to ease freshmen's financial burdens. Central Baptist College last year offered additional $2,500 scholarships to freshmen receiving the Academic Challenge Scholarship, the official name of the lottery scholarship.

For those freshmen who will be sophomores in the fall, the extra $2,500 scholarships will be renewed, said Deanna Ott, a spokesman for the college. Last year, 80 such awards were given out, according to Ott. Incoming freshmen this year aren't eligible for the award, however.

The University of Central Arkansas in Conway offered a one-time $750 scholarship to 1,655 freshman lottery scholarship recipients last year, but is not offering the same award for the coming school year. Other schools like Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock did not provide any stopgap funding specifically for lottery scholarship recipients affected by the award cuts.

UA did "what we felt like we had funding to do," McCray said, with the university adjusting academic requirements for an existing, one-time scholarship for freshmen that was known as the Freshman Academic Scholarship.

Even with changes, only some lottery scholarship recipients qualify for the $1,000 award. The UA scholarship for Arkansas residents requires a minimum 3.3 grade-point average and a score of 24 on the ACT college entrance exam, while the lottery scholarships require graduating public high school students to have a minimum 2.5 grade-point average or to score a 19 on the ACT exam. The highest possible score on the exam is 36.

The change in requirements last year led to 153 more lottery scholarship recipients receiving $1,000 each in aid from UA than in the previous year, said McCray. Students may not have known to apply for the UA award, which in the past was given to students with better academic credentials.

"I think many of the students who were in that situation at that lower GPA and ACT knew that we didn't traditionally give scholarships at that level and didn't apply," McCray said. With UA this year having encouraged more students to apply for the $1,000 awards, "we anticipate we'll give more this year," McCray said.

It may still be a small percentage of lottery students getting extra aid, however, with UA enrolling 1,803 freshman lottery scholarship recipients last fall. That number was a decrease from the year earlier, when 2,095 freshman UA students were lottery scholarship recipients.

Last year, 2,186 freshman students were from in state; for the 2012-13 freshman class, a total of 2,421 hailed from Arkansas.

UA's total scholarship budget will remain the same this year as last year, about $11.3 million. But the university has "moved money" to other "Arkansas-focused" scholarships, McCray said.

Lottery sales continue to concern higher education officials, with two consecutive years of decreasing revenue. Earlier this month, state officials reported an overall drop of $29.5 million in revenue for the fiscal year that ended June 30. For the funds devoted to scholarships, the dip was $8.9 million.

McCray said the lottery program has helped UA enroll more in-state students and more lower-income students receiving federal aid known as Pell grants.

"What it said was, when students had the money to go to school, we were a good choice for them, and they wanted to come here," McCray said.

But any further cuts could jeopardize those results at UA, she said, noting that Pell grant recipients among freshmen fell to 940 for the 2013-14 school year compared with 1,022 a year earlier, a change she said is "probably lottery-driven."

As far as the award requirements, "I think we've gotten down to as low as we can go and have a meaningful scholarship," McCray said.

A Section on 07/23/2014