Issue Position: HOPE Scholarship & Cost of College

Issue Position

In the early 1990s, the state of Georgia made a pact with Georgians. If you worked hard and succeeded in your studies, the state of Georgia, through the Lottery, would to cover college costs at a public Georgia institution.

This pact, called HOPE, pushed Georgia ahead of our Southern neighbors. Indeed, HOPE became a national model of higher education funding, and changed lives--including mine. As a poor girl from rural Northwest Georgia, my family could not afford to help me pay for college. But with the help of HOPE, I was able to go to the University of Georgia and get one of the best educations in the country.

Since then, the cost of college has sky rocketed, the Lottery is spending less of a percentage of their proceeds on education, and the state has had to start prioritizing where they will spend Lottery dollars in a way we've never had to before.

Unfortunately, we cannot simply return to the HOPE Scholarship program of the 1990s, despite recent record profits at the Lottery. It has been my number one priority in the legislature to fight to make sure we are spending the limited Lottery dollars as wisely as possible. And we can do better.

The best use of those dollars is to ensure we are directing funds toward students who need them the most and would not otherwise find their way to a college campus without financial assistance. It is the best way for Georgia to attract a broader population of students to higher education--something that is desperately needed if we hope to compete for the jobs of the future. A targeted merit and needs based scholarship would not only offer a path out of poverty like the one offered to me, but it would also allow us to get a higher return on investment as HOPE graduates enter the job market with the skills they couldn't afford to attain.

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