If demonstrated, multimillion-dollar waste isn’t cause to rethink a government program, what is?
Tennessee is squandering lottery revenue on scholarships that many students lose by the end of their first year of college.
How many? Well, the overwhelming majority of UTC freshmen get the scholarships – and then half lose eligibility for academic reasons. The rate varies somewhat at colleges around the state, but you can see the problem – a problem compounded by the fact that students who lose their scholarships face a significant chance of dropping out.
Tennessee could slash that waste by requiring students to earn both a minimum 3.0 grade point average in high school and a minimum 21 on the ACT before they are eligible for the $4,000 per year that the scholarship furnishes to students bound for four-year colleges. At present, students who reach either of those benchmarks get the money – which has proved colossally ill advised. For instance, of students who receive lottery scholarships for four-year schools based strictly on their ACT scores, only 20 percent get good enough grades to remain eligible beyond their freshman year. The rest lose the scholarships, and often leave school. In effect, the state is paying them $4,000 to fritter away a year of their lives.
The technical term for that is “money pit.”