The state Senate’s Ways and Means Committee began considering a bill Wednesday that would establish the Oregon HOPE Scholarship, which would give Oregon high school students with a 3.0 or higher GPA a free ride at state colleges. Senate Bill 100, sponsored by Sen. Ryan Deckert, D-Beaverton, and Sen. Tom Hartung, R-Cedar Mill, is intended to show high school students that scholastic achievement is important and induce them to stay in Oregon for their higher education.
This bill, as written, is not a good idea, and the Emerald editorial board hopes it gets killed in committee or gets rewritten to address what we think are some serious problems.
Merit-based aid, as a concept, seems reasonable. As a community, lower-income high school students are offered quite a bit of emotional and financial support throughout the educational process. The Oregon Need grant, Pell grants and fee waivers may not cover everyone’s need, but there are programs out there. So it might be responsible of the state to also establish a program encouraging students who excel to continue their high achievement and showing other students that the state values their success.
However, until need-based grants assist every person who requires them, until a wider definition of scholastic aptitude is developed and until some standards are applied, the state doesn’t need to be helping those who are uniquely positioned to help themselves.
According to the Oregon Student Association, 11,000 students were denied financial help from the Oregon Need grant because it is underfunded. Sens. Deckert and Hartung would be doing much more valuable work if they fought to get more money from taxpayers to fully fund need-based student assistance. As soon as the Need grant covers everyone in need, then we can talk about making scholarships based on merit.
Despite the funding issue, our biggest concern was the idea that a 3.0 GPA means that a student is excelling scholastically. If we want to encourage students to be intelligent, educated citizens, more or different parameters need to be established. We know of students who skate through easy classes their senior year in order to push their GPA higher. Does this mean they’re challenging themselves or excelling? Hardly.
A full definition of scholarship would include Advanced Placement classes (maybe HOPE students should be required to take two, for example), community service (require a certain number of hours or a certain number of different agencies), jobs (special consideration could be given to students who have shown they can balance education and employment) and extracurricular activities, in addition to grades.
And what about SAT scores or letters of recommendation? Those of us familiar with scholarships and financial aid know there are many indicators of a high achiever. Adopting more parameters would mean a more complicated formula for awarding the HOPE scholarship, but it would also do much more to properly encourage students.
The final concerns we have about this version of merit-based aid involve standards. Should everyone who meets the scholastic requirements be eligible for aid? Even within merit-based aid, is means testing totally unreasonable? Why does the state need to give a free ride to students whose parents make, say, $100,000 per year? In fact, some wealthier parents might want their children to learn the value of both money and education, and they might require their children to pursue scholarships or get a job to pay for college themselves. Denying those students the HOPE scholarship won’t force their parents to pick up the bill.
Another standard we worry about pertains to the budget. How much money should the state dedicate to a program just to show support for smart kids? After all, smart kids are the ones who can easily ferret out scholarships from all over the country, send off 30 scholarship applications and probably receive 10 awards. Smart students already have “HOPE.” How much more do they need, and should it come at the expense of need-based grants? Maybe a limit could be set — say, 30 percent — and funding for merit-based aid would be restricted to a certain percentage of funding given to need-based grants.
Working through concerns like these is possible, however. We hope the Senate gives this issue substantial thought and debate. Encouraging students to become intelligent citizens who care about learning takes more than just throwing some money at “B” students. And in the meantime, there are plenty of lower-income students who do want to expand their education, but there isn’t even enough money to help them.