Arkansas Lottery Scholarship applications from nontraditional students continued to fall, dropping nearly 20 percent from last year, a trend that officials say threatens to exacerbate the shortage of trained workers in the state.
On Monday, Brett Powell, the head of the Higher Education Department, told a legislative subcommittee that the number of nontraditional students -- those who have taken at least a semester off from school following high school -- applying for the scholarship dollars fell from about 10,700 last year to 8,667 this year.
After the rollout of the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships in 2010, there were about 48,500 applications from nontraditional students and about a third of those, 16,500, received scholarships to either start or continue their education.
"These numbers are down dramatically," Powell said. "For me that's an area of concern because nontraditional [students] is an area we're going to have to concentrate on if we're going to [increase] that number of people who are credentialed to meet workforce needs."
Nontraditional students make up a small portion of those who apply for the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships, which are funded by net proceeds from the Arkansas Lottery as well as from a $20 million injection of general revenue from the state.
This year more than 20,000 high school students applied, with about 13,500 receiving scholarships, Powell said.
Over the past few years, only about 2,300 scholarships have been awarded to nontraditional students who applied. Funding for nontraditional student scholarships has hovered around $12 million in recent years and is set at $13 million this year, according to education officials.
But given Gov. Asa Hutchinson's priority of expanding and improving workforce training and education opportunities, Powell said that colleges and universities need to improve degree and vocational certifications to meet the demands of state industries.
There are already more jobs available in Arkansas than people qualified to take them, Powell said. And the shortage of Arkansas workers with appropriate certifications and degrees will climb to 160,000 by 2020, if current trends continue, he added.
Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, said Monday that lawmakers and higher education officials need to target those nontraditional students because they are the ones who can give the state the most "bang for their buck" in filling that gap.
"It's a significant part [of Hutchinson's goal]. In some cases we're talking about retraining, maybe people who already have a degree in one area and they realize it's not a growth area and so an emerging technology is developed and they want to get educated in that," Lowery said. "We need to be able to incentivize them into getting retrained in that. The [nontraditional] scholarship is a way to do that."
This past spring, lawmakers changed the requirements for scholarship eligibility, as well as the payout model, giving students incremental increases every year, starting at $1,000 for freshmen and ending at $5,000 for seniors at four-year institutions.
Since its creation, the Arkansas Lottery has given scholarships to more than 30,000 students, but for the past two years, the lottery's revenues, and the amounts available for scholarships, have fallen.
In fiscal year 2012, lottery revenue peaked at providing $97.5 million in scholarship money. But this year, lottery officials expect that figure to drop to about $75 million.
During Monday's legislative meeting, Powell said that there are several factors that could explain the drop in applications from nontraditional students.
For one, he said, it's possible that the pool of interested nontraditional students has been shrinking over the years due to the creation of the scholarship. He also said that the growing popularity of online education programs could also be taking away potential nontraditional students.
Lowery said that while the lottery scholarship has been well advertised to high-schoolers, he hasn't seen a single advertisement geared towards nontraditional students.
He said he wonders if nontraditional students are simply unaware that the money is available.
"I think a lot of times, once they leave high school and they don't go straight to college, they think there's no opportunity for them," Lowery said. "I think it's a case of getting the word out there that if you left high school and you didn't go straight to college the lottery school is still available."
Powell said that awareness, or a lack of it, is likely the smallest factor but said state officials need to address it.
"I think we need to do a better job of publicizing the scholarship," Powell said.
Metro on 06/09/2015