By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida
Lawmakers will likely whittle away at the popular Bright Futures Scholarship program that pays for the education of more than half of Florida’s college students this year as they write the budget for the state’s colleges and universities.
The Senate is examining a change to the scholarship that could reduce the number of students who are eligible for the award and also permanently take it away from students who can’t keep their grades up.
“We simply don’t have the money,” said Senate Higher Education Appropriations Chair Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, who presented a list of potential Bright Futures tweaks to committee members this week.
Since the 1997 inception of the scholarship program that originally paid full or partial tuition for Florida’s highest achieving students, the program has ballooned from $75 million for the first year to $435 million in 2008-2009. And to sustain it at that level would cost the state $480 million.
Last spring, lawmakers began looking at possible changes to the program when it became clear it could no longer pay full tuition for so many students and decided to give students a flat scholarship that did not keep up with the pace of tuition as it had in the past. The highest achieving students currently receive $126 per credit hour, while a second tier of students receives $95 per credit hour.
To qualify for the top Bright Futures award, a student must earn a 3.5 grade point average and a 1270 SAT score. For the secondary award, students must earn a 3.0 grade point average and a 970 SAT score.
But with continuing budget woes projected for the next few years and the rising number of students who qualify, more changes might be necessary, Lynn told the News Service. Legislative economists have predicted that 179,732 Florida students will qualify for the award next year.
“We know that next year without stimulus money, we’ll probably have a real problem and the following year isn’t much better,” Lynn said Thursday.
The award amount will likely remain flat for the 2010-2011 school year, but it will also be more difficult to qualify for the scholarship. One proposal includes raising the SAT requirements from 1270 to 1290 for the top award and 970 to 1050 for the secondary award. It also changes the stakes for students who don’t keep up their grades.
Currently, students in the first tier must maintain a 3.0 grade point average, while the second tier students must maintain a 2.75 GPA. If they fail to do that and lose the scholarship, they can eventually apply for reinstatement. That would change under the plan Lynn put forth. The proposal would ban students who lose their scholarship from reapplying.
Rep. Bill Proctor, R-St. Augustine, Lynn’s House budget counterpart, said his committee had not planned on making changes to the program, but acknowledged that in the long run the state may need to look at changes if it wants to keep giving students money.
Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, who is the vice chairman of the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee, said he understands that Lynn must balance the budget, but that the proposal represents a bigger problem in education funding. The Legislature is “not properly funding education” overall, Gelber said Thursday. Bright Futures, he said, has helped pay for a lot of Floridians’ educations.
“It’s one of the few bright spots that we’ve had in higher education,” he said.
The Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee is next set to meet Tuesday where it will finalize its budget proposal, including the Bright Futures alterations. The House committee is also set to meet that day, but an agenda has not yet been finalized.
