College presidents to state lawmakers: Change way lottery scholarships awarded to curb rising tuition
Santa Fe New Mexican – The leaders of New Mexico’s colleges and universities want the state Legislature to decouple lottery scholarships from tuition costs — a move, they say, that would discourage colleges from raising tuition and perhaps give schools leeway in parceling out the scholarship money.
Garrey Carruthers, chancellor of New Mexico State University, made the request on behalf of the Council of University Presidents during a Legislative Finance Committee hearing Tuesday.
“This will break the tradition of tuition going up in comparison to the lottery scholarship,” Carruthers told legislators.
Since the New Mexico Lottery was established more than two decades ago, its profits have funded scholarships for qualifying in-state students to attend New Mexico’s public universities and colleges. The amount of lottery scholarship money a student receives is tied to that student’s tuition costs.
The details of the proposal by the school leaders have not been worked out, but Carruthers said one idea would be to give every lottery scholarship recipient somewhere between $1,400 and $1,500 per semester, regardless of where the student goes to college.
Or, he said, each college could receive a block grant of lottery scholarship money and decide whether to dole it out based on student merit or need.
His hope, he said, is that the move would help save the lottery scholarship program. Lottery profits, which fund the program, haven’t kept pace with tuition increases and increased student demand for scholarships.
A lottery scholarship once paid for 100 percent of an eligible student’s tuition costs at New Mexico colleges, but it now covers just 60 percent of tuition for some 26,000 students who rely on the fund. When the lottery scholarship program covered 100 percent of tuition, schools were free to raise tuition knowing that the lottery would continue to cover the full tuition costs of scholarship recipients.
The Legislative Finance Committee recently cautioned that tuition increases initiated by schools to address shrinking revenues from declining enrollment and dwindling financial support from state government could make college unaffordable for impoverished students.
Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, and chairwoman of Legislative Finance Committee, applauded the idea by the college and university leaders, saying, “This makes sense to me. …. The block grants would go to the student directly.”
Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, said he would sign on to any bills proposed to make the change in the 30-day legislative session beginning in mid-January.
“There’s not enough money in the lottery scholarship for everyone. We need to fix it,” he said. “If colleges made it merit- or needs-based, it could really help students.”
Higher Education Department Secretary Barbara Damron said she also supports the plan.
“The question is: How much should that [per-student grant] be?,” she said. “Some say a flat $1,000 per student. Some say $1,500, some say $2,000, depending on where those students go to college.”
Other legislators seemed unsure of the idea.
Rep. Jimmie Hall, D-Albuquerque, said, “This is a new concept and I would like to know more about it. I don’t know if it will get us any further along in what we need.”
Since 2008, the Legislature has required the lottery to allocate 30 percent of its gross ticket sales for the scholarship program. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, lottery proceeds for the program were $37.8 million, down from $46.3 million in the previous budget year.
Lottery scholarships are available to New Mexican residents who go to college in the first semester following high school graduation, maintain a minimum of a 2.5 grade point average and meet other requirements.
During the meeting, Damron proposed a roughly $34 million budget for the Higher Education Department, a “flat” request that would not require any increased investment.
Source: US Government Class
