HOW WE SEE IT: Four-Year Scholarships In Demand

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Traditional students who were granted lotteryfunded college scholarships in Arkansas this year overwhelmingly opted for four-year as opposed to two-year schools - even more so than state education officials had predicted.

Jim Purcell, director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, said recently that his department had projected that no more than two-thirds of traditional students receiving an Academic Challenge Scholarship would attend four-year schools.

In fact, of the 12,592 traditional students who were granted these scholarships, 9,370 - 74.4 percent - chose to attend a four-year college.

There’s reason to cheer this report. Arkansas is woefully behind most of the nation when it comes to adults who have acquired a bachelor’sdegree. The more that students commit to pursuing a four-year degree, the better it ought to be for our state’s education level.

Then again, this raises a problem. The Legislature set the lottery-funded scholarships at $2,500 for twoyear colleges and $5,000 for four-year colleges. More students choosing four-year colleges means that the scholarship fund is getting drained quicker. Legislators and lottery commissioners, then, will have to get creative to ensure there’s “enough funds to go around in a meaningful way,” as Purcell put it.

This will be a challenge. As we’ve noted before, the Legislature overextended itself when it set these scholarship amounts; it overpromised and underdelivered, leaving thousands of students who qualified for one without a scholarship. Purcell and others saw that one coming, but the Legislature couldn’t help itself when it came to doling out money.

Meanwhile, we have concerns for the two-year schools.

These schools have drawn many of their students because they are cheaper than the four-year colleges, and their credits can transfer to four-year colleges. But with twice as much scholarship money available to attend a four-year college, the financial incentive for attending a two-year is severely dampened. Something is wrong with this picture.

The scholarships are good at getting students inside the college gates, but remember, the ultimate goal is to get them out with a degree in their hands.

The two biggest roadblocks to increasing our percapita number of college graduates is a lack of money to pay for college and a lack of academic preparation for it.

The scholarships help with the lack of money. As for the lack of preparation, it’s up to our primary and secondary schools to ensure students don’t need costly remedial work.

All of this gives the Legislature a lot to think about when it convenes in 2011.