By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Addressing the state Lottery Commission at its first meeting in May 2009, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter said the state lottery would fund scholarships “not just for graduating high schools seniors but also for what we affectionately call nontraditional students.”
That affection isn’t returned by many nontraditional students who recently learned they were not being awarded despite having met every qualification.
“Once it became painfully evident that over half of the people that applied for this were not going to receive it, I think that should have been more publicly broadcast to prepare people for that fact. The impression I had until yesterday was that I was going to receive an award,” Bruce Stracener of Little Rock said Thursday.
Stracener, 32, a part-time student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has completed 60 hours toward a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He has a 3.9 college grade-point average and scored 31 on his ACT.
Despite his impressive academic record, Stracener learned Wednesday he will not receive a scholarship unless funds become available through other students declining their awards. The process gives traditional students priority over nontraditional students.
“A student out of high school, unproven, who has … a 2.5 GPA and has completed the Arkansas Smart Core or had a 19 on their ACT received it. Every single person that applied received it,” Stracener said. “Meanwhile, you have numerous students like myself, 31 on their ACT, 3.8, 3.9, 4.0 (GPA), who have proven themselves capable over various amounts of credit hours, who were denied.”
The state Department of Higher Education said last week that of the 54,533 students who applied for lottery-funded scholarships, 25,445 were notified that they will receive an award. The rest either did not qualify or have been put on a waiting list.
The Legislature set aside $41.5 million for “current achievers,” or traditional students already in college, and set no cap on scholarships for graduating high school seniors. It set aside $12 million for scholarships for nontraditional students, an amount that was outstripped by the demand.
Because there is not enough money for all the nontraditional students, scholarships are awarded according to a ranking system that gives 70 percent weight to students’ nearness to graduation, 20 percent to grades and 10 percent to fields of study the state considers most vital.
Stracener said providing just $12 million for nontraditional students was “a travesty.” He questioned why lawmakers didn’t set smaller scholarship amounts or higher academic standards to ensure that students like him wouldn’t be left empty-handed.
“Give it to the students who have demonstrated that they have the drive and the ability,” he said.
Bradley Binns, 27, of Little Rock, also a nontraditional UALR student who was denied a scholarship despite meeting all the qualifications, voiced a similar complaint.
“The majority of it went to freshmen,” he said. “I mean, no offense, but a lot of their parents paid for it anyway. We work full time.”
State Rep. Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock, House chairman of the legislative oversight committee on the lottery, said he understood why some were frustrated with the program.
“I’m disappointed that it’s fallen short,” he said. “I’m disappointed that there are some folks out there that were declined that were really hoping to receive the help of it. I can tell you that we’ll be trying to look at the numbers this time (when the Legislature convenes in January) to see if we can make the dollars stretch farther.”
Hyde said he fought successfully to increase the amount of money for nontraditional students from the original proposal of $8 million and to allow unused money to be transferred from other categories to the nontraditional category. It was difficult to predict how many nontraditional students would apply, he said.
“It really centered around the nontraditional group being so difficult to identify and get a grip on,” he said.
Hyde said that when lawmakers convene next year they will look again at the scholarship amounts and the pot of money set aside for nontraditional students, but he defended the existing academic requirements.
“I don’t recall anyone promoting the lottery saying, ‘We’re going to give our very best students this scholarship.’ We said we were going to make the scholarship available to every student,” he said.
Adding to students’ frustration was the state Department of Higher Education’s lengthy notification process. Stracener said he learned he had been declined just eight days before the first day of classes at UALR.
“It introduces a new element of difficulty that I could have been prepared to deal with had I known ahead of time that this wasn’t going to come through,” he said.
The department hired nearly 50 extra workers last month to help process applications and notify students. Director Jim Purcell said the staff was overwhelmed by the large number of applications.
“It’s about the number we expected to award, (but) there were more people that applied” than expected, he said.
Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who led the drive for the scholarship lottery amendment that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2008, said he was pleased that the number of Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships being awarded has tripled this year, thanks to lottery revenue.
But Halter said the overwhelming number of applications points to a need to make college affordable and accessible to even more students. He also said the Higher Education Department should improve its procedures “so applicants will know well before the academic year begins whether they have been awarded a scholarship.”
