ATLANTA – Georgia’s promise was simple: Get good grades in high school, get a free college education. More than a million students took advantage. Soon, however, it may be offered only to the brightest of the bright.
College costs and enrollment are rising in the state, and the governor is proposing to cut back on the first-in-the-nation HOPE scholarship, reserving the free ride for those with at least a 3.7 GPA, up from 3.0, and a 1200 on the SAT.
The rest would get some tuition help, an amount that could change from year to year.
All of it has high schoolers and their families scrambling to figure out how to pay for college, at a time of the year when they are busy deciding what school to attend next fall.
“Basically, HOPE was the reason I was staying in the state in the first place,” said Maya Basu, 18, a senior from Cumming, Ga., whose older sister used it to attend the University of Georgia. “It’s just going to make it really difficult.”
Education experts and officials in the dozen states with similar programs are watching Georgia’s moves closely.
“People are going to be looking to Georgia to see what can go wrong,” said Will Doyle, a researcher at Vanderbilt University who focuses on lottery scholarships. “These programs weren’t built to last.”
