Editorial: Partial scholarships for full loads

Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

Thousands of Nevada students are now paying the price for a compromise that the state Legislature, in order to preserve the cash-poor state Millennium Scholarship program, struck in the final hours of a special session last year.

The program once offered graduates of Nevada high schools scholarships covering a full class load of 15 credits per semester at state schools of higher education. But in order to save money, state lawmakers decided last summer that the scholarships now will pay for only 12 credits per semester.

Millennium Scholars who want to earn their degrees within the scholarships' four-year time frame will have to shell out $300 to $400 more per semester in order to carry the 15 credits per semester needed to graduate in four years.

"I love our Legislature, and you have to be in the thick of things to know why (lawmakers) do the things they do," UNLV Student Body President Peter Goatz said in a Wednesday story by the Las Vegas Sun, "but sometimes they make decisions without understanding what it will do to students."

The program, initiated in 1999 with money from the national tobacco settlement, awards $10,000 to students with a grade point average of B or better. But the state hasn't received as much tobacco money as expected. Lawmakers appropriated $35 million in taxpayer money and also earmarked $7.6 million annually from abandoned property funds. But it wasn't enough, so they made the cuts.

Their changes also included gradually increasing the minimum grade point average to 3.25 by 2007. That was a good move. We applaud anything that serves as an incentive for our students to perform better. But the budget cut wasn't one. Nevada students now are asked to work harder in high school and maintain a higher grade point average so they can be rewarded with a scholarship that is, at best, partial.

The state had a $300 million surplus last year -- part of which could have helped sustain the Millennium Scholarship as a true, full scholarship program, instead of being returned to Nevadans in politically popular but respectively small increments.

Some students told the Sun that without full scholarships they will not be able to return to college. No one needs to "be in the thick of things" to see and understand the tragedy of that.