Gov. Rick Scott is talking up his goals of limiting college tuition increases and his “$10,000 bachelor’s degrees,” and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is, again, investigating Bright Futures scholarships.
I’m sure many students laugh out loud at the idea of paying only $10,000 for a college degree, and there have been many complaints about the fairness and achievability of the 12-year-old Bright Futures program.
According to a recent Tampa Bay Times article from March 22, more than $4 billion in scholarships has gone to wealthy or white families since the program’s start in 1997. Some of these families could even afford tuition without any financial assistance.
Just in the past few years, lawmakers have raised standards for the program, making it harder to get. Raising the minimum SAT and ACT scores and designating a certain dollar amount per credit hour instead of a percentage may limit the amount of money awarded each year, but it also directly affects and excludes minorities and students of poorer families.
Wealthier families can afford to pay for test preparation courses for their high schoolers. They can help their child study for those tough Advanced Placement tests and shell out the money for tutors.
The rest of us, who don’t have parents who are able to buy us anything and everything we need for academic success, suffer the consequences of an unfair program that is supposed to increase the amount of students going to college, not limit it.
The rest of us probably didn’t have the time or money to get test prep or buy those $50 test prep books. We had jobs to help pay our bills and the expenses of being a high school student.
I took the SAT and the ACT twice. I didn’t get the minimum score for the “100 percent” scholarship. But I excelled in high school, graduating at the top of my class senior year while taking eight courses, four of which were dual enrollment classes through St. Petersburg College. I also had a job all four years of high school.
I have a Bright Futures scholarship # the “75 percent” one. But Bright Futures doesn’t help pay tuition by percentages. It pays a certain dollar amount per credit hour. I’ve calculated it a few times. I’m not exactly getting 75 percent of my tuition covered by the Florida Lottery-funded scholarship program; it’s more like 60 percent at best.
Tuition increases almost every year, but Bright Futures doesn’t budge with its assistance.
Research from the past few decades has shown that poorer families and minorities have had lower standardized test scores, possibly because of the lack of time and money for test prep. So, raising test scores negatively affects them.
Interestingly, minorities and poorer people are the ones most heavily playing the lottery. But they are the ones who are less likely to benefit from the program. So those who play the lottery most, hoping to win some money for education, might not benefit from the program they support.
Lawmakers’ decisions to raise standards for scholarships probably didn’t intentionally target poorer families or minorities. But their decisions directly impact those groups of people.
The high standards, the inaccurate and inadequate rewards for hard-working students, are unfair. But I guess life is just unfair.
Chelsea is a senior majoring in mass communications and the managing editor. She can be reached at chelsea11@mail.usf.edu and on Twitter @chelsea91t.
