Hope Hope Hope

Yesterday, while eyes were busy watching the returns from Kentucky and Oregon, Tennessee's State Senate was passing a few amendments to the Hope Scholarship program. Now as someone who has yet to benefit from that program due to me not graduating the right year, I am happy to see the TN Senate has made some decent changes to it. First off, your first 2.5 years of college you only need to maintain a 2.75 GPA, under the compromise you would need to raise it to a 3.0 by your junior year.

Now why I find this program to be fair to most students, I think our state would be wise to invest this Lottery money not in scholarships, but directly into the budgets of State Universities and Community Colleges. The reason I say this because tuition rates continue to climb because state schools are not funded! Already this scholarship does not pay the full tuition at any state university in Tennessee, and as each year passes, it may not even pay for the textbooks.

I hope they can find a better way to spend this money, and I do not think that way is by a scholarship program. Love the idea, but honestly, it does not begin to address the real problem of funding that causes tuition to continue to rise.

-Zak