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October 14, 2004
Edited by Donald E. Heller and
Patricia Marin
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A central dream of American parents is sending their
kids to college. What used to be unusual has now become a necessity
if young people are to have a secure life in the middle class in
a post-industrial economy. As such, one basic goal of higher education
policy should be to make certain that this opportunity is not foreclosed
by a family’s income or wealth. In a society where 40 percent
of students are non-White, it is more important than ever to be
sure that minority students ...
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Two years ago, The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University issued its first report on state-funded merit scholarship
programs. Who Should We Help? The Negative Social Consequences of
Merit Scholarships (Heller & Marin, 2002) examined four of the
nation’s largest merit programs in Georgia, Florida, New Mexico,
and Michigan. In that study, we reported that the dozen states in
the nation that awarded broad-based merit scholarships without consideration
of financial need spent $863 million on these programs in the 2000-01
academic year..
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In 1647, the Massachusetts General Court passed the
Old Deluder Satan Act. Under this law, towns in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony with at least 50 households were required to provide
a tutor in reading and writing, and towns with at least 100 households
were required to operate a grammar school (Heck, 2004). With this
act, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate publicly-provided
education at the local level...
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Higher education has become the threshold for access
to good jobs for individuals and, in turn, is vital to the future
of a strong state economy (Advisory Committee on Student Financial
Assistance [ACSFA], 2001; Carnevale & Fry, 2001). To balance
the interests of society and higher education, the states have been
exploring ways to provide access, keep their brightest students
in-state for college, and encourage and reward students who excel
academically (Heller, 2002; Linn, 1998; Parsons, 1997). One mechanism
states use to achieve these goals is non-need, merit-based scholarship
programs. Since 1993, 14 states have implemented broad-based merit-based
scholarship programs that award grants without consideration of
financial need. ..
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This chapter examines Georgia’s HOPE (Helping
Outstanding Students Educationally) Program and its effects on underrepresented
minorities and low-income students, building on our earlier work
(Cornwell & Mustard, 2002). Our previous study concluded that,
in the first five years of the program since its founding in 1993,
HOPE raised the enrollment rate (the ratio of first-time freshmen
to recent high-school graduates) in Georgia colleges eight percent
relative to the average enrollment rate in other member states of
the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). This gain was realized
primarily at four-year institutions, a pattern that held for both
Whites and Blacks, although the percentage increase for Blacks was
higher. The relatively large increase for Blacks is explained in
large part by the presence of several relatively large Historically-Black
Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Georgia.
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This chapter provides an update on how minority and
low-income students have fared under the New Mexico Lottery Scholarship
program. Our earlier study (Binder & Ganderton, 2002), based
on only two full program years, showed that while there was a substantial
increase in enrollments at four-year colleges in New Mexico when
the scholarship program was first implemented, much of the effect
appeared to be a redistribution of students away from colleges outside
the state. We had also found that at the University of New Mexico,
the enrollment response was concentrated among wealthier, less academically
prepared students and, as a result, retention rates had fallen.
In addition to adding five years of data to our original study,
this update also reviews new programs introduced at UNM to improve
retention for new scholarship students...
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Indiana’s Twenty-first Century Scholars Program
and the Washington State Achievers Program are important “experiments”
of early guarantees of college financial assistance to students
in middle schools or high schools. While these programs cannot be
characterized as “scientific” experiments because they
did not randomly assign treatment (i.e., grant guarantees), they
are social experiments in the best sense of the American progressive
tradition, consistent with this country’s history of using
a balanced approach to economic and social development (St. John
& Parsons, 2004). These programs are especially important for
state policy on higher education finance. Historically, economic
research on education has overlooked the influence of guarantees
on preparation for college. Further, since federal policy research
on student access now frequently ignores the direct effects of finances
on access and attainment (e.g., NCES, 1997a, 2001a), it is important
to rethink the role of state financial aid in promoting access...
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