Saving a scholarship

By Christina Littlefield

Monday, Feb. 5, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

State lawmakers are wondering how to stretch the life of the Millennium Scholarship, which is credited with boosting the number of Nevada college students but is running dry.

In his State of the State address, Gov. Jim Gibbons proposed pouring another $2.8 million a year into the program to keep it afloat. He also stressed the need to tighten eligibility requirements to stretch Millennium dollars.

Six Republican lawmakers - four senators and two assemblymen - have bill drafts to do just that. One of the more controversial proposals would limit the scholarships to students going into fields that meet the state's workforce needs.

Designed to help Nevada retain and support the best and brightest youth, and increase the number of Nevadans going to college, the Millennium Scholarships originally offered full tuition for high school graduates with a grade average of B or better.

Since it was created in 2000, it has assisted more than 40,000 students with $125.9 million in aid. It has been funded with a share of Nevada's tobacco industry settlement funds. But the pool is shrinking.

As a result, the scholarship now pays only a portion of tuition for up to 12 credits, and it has become harder to qualify for and keep. But higher education officials credit the Millennium Scholarship with having improved the state's culture of seeking higher education.

The number of students attending the state's colleges and universities has more than doubled since 2000, and Millennium scholars have shown higher success rates than their non-Millennium peers. Millennium scholars need less remedial help to do well in college, they are more likely to stay in school and they have higher graduation rates.

The program has been so successful, in fact, that scholarship payments surpassed the tobacco money coming in only three years into the program.

In 2005, when the program was down to $1.4 million and couldn't make January's tuition payments until an April tobacco payment came in, lawmakers infused it with a one-time $35 million deposit from the General Fund and $7.6 million a year from the state's unclaimed property fund. They also tightened requirements, upping the GPA requirement to 3.25 for this year's graduating high school seniors, increasing the GPA students need to keep the scholarships, giving scholars only one chance to lose the scholarship and requalify, and limiting scholarship payments to a maximum of 12 credits a semester. The Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents also established a college preparatory curriculum students must take to qualify for the scholarships, which goes into effect in 2009.

With only one semester of data, it is too soon to determine how much money those cuts will save, State Treasurer Kate Marshall said. Enrollment in the program dropped by nearly 5,000 students to just over 17,000 last fall. Of those, 28 percent did not meet eligibility requirements for the spring semester.

Even so, costs for fiscal year 2006 were only about $1 million less than the year before. At that pace, the Millennium fund will dry up by 2013.

The state needs to further restrict the program or allocate more money - and lawmakers seem inclined to do both.

Following a line of thinking from Gibbons' address that the program needed to emphasis science, math, teaching and nursing degrees, Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, is proposing limiting the scholarships to students in those fields and others needed for the state's workforce such as business and engineering.

Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, is proposing a Millennium supplement for education students in science, math or special education to fill the need for teachers.

Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, wants to use SAT or ACT college entrance test scores rather than GPA to award the scholarships because he thinks the GPA requirement has led to grade inflation and the dumbing down of high school curriculum. But he also supports any initiatives that will help the scholarship live "within its means."

"I prefer we give full rides to fewer kids than partial rides to more kids," Beers said.

Sen. Joe Heck, R-Henderson, has a bill draft to restrict all state funded financial aid to students legally in the state, as opposed to the current requirement that they simply graduate from a Nevada high school.

Assemblyman James Settelmyer, R-Gardnerville, suggests that Millennium scholars be required to seek federal financial aid and use the Millennium only as a supplement. Assemblyman Chad Christensen, R-Las Vegas, is researching turning the scholarship into a state-subsidized loan program "with perks."

Jane Nichols, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said the state's colleges and universities want more scholarships to entice students into important programs - but not if it means further restricting the Millennium Scholarship.

"I think it would be a tragic mistake to limit the Millennium to only a few disciplines," Nichols said. "We're talking about the whole state's economic future. The state needs more college graduates and the Millennium is key for that future."

Further restricting the scholarship would also defeat the purpose of increasing the state's college enrollment and allowing students to better focus on academics rather than having to work to pay expenses, Nichols said.

Millennium scholar Juan Plata, for example, has a 3.99 GPA in mechanical engineering at UNLV while working as a research assistant at Desert Research Institute and a part-time tutor.

He plans to attend graduate school and become a biomedical engineer. Scholarships have made that all possible.

"I wouldn't be able to have the GPA that I have right now if I had to work as much as other students have to work," said the Col ombia native, who passed his test for U.S. citizenship last week.

"My No. 1 goal is to be a student, and scholarships help me do that."