Giving Compass' Take:
- Bridget Goodman reports on the Georgia General Assembly allocating millions of dollars for Georgia's public colleges and universities to have their first state-funded, need-based scholarship.
- How can philanthropy boost access to higher education for students from rural, often underserved communities?
- Ask a custom question to find other nonprofits focused on higher education.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
The Georgia General Assembly just allocated millions of dollars to establish a new need-based scholarship. But experts warn that it won’t cover the cost of attendance for low-income and rural students.
The state’s DREAMS (Dedicating Resources to Educationally Advance More Students) scholarship ends Georgia’s designation as one of two states without state-funded need-based aid for higher education.
“It takes us off the naughty list of not having a program like that,” said Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the University System of Georgia (USG), which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. “We still have compassion for those students who have to struggle to make the cost and the sacrifices for obtaining a higher education.”
This legislative session, the state legislature appropriated $325 million to start the state’s need-based aid program.
More than $12 million will go to Georgia’s students this academic year with maximum awards of $3,000 per student annually. Another $12.5 million will go out next year, while the remaining $300 million will serve as a scholarship endowment.
Rural Students
For Georgia’s rural students, knowing there’s need-based aid available may encourage more students to pursue higher education.
“In rural communities, concerns about pay, access to jobs, poverty level can really constrain thinking about opportunities for post-secondary education,” said Darris Means, Dean’s Fellow for Rural Education and professor of educational leadership at Clemson University.
Georgia currently has the second highest share of adults with federal student loan debt in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Education data.
Ray Li, policy counsel for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, said that he believes Georgia has a high student debt burden — despite having lower higher education costs than other states — because Georgia has not provided need-based aid.
Means said that for lower-income students, fear of losing merit-based scholarships can lead them to opt out of higher education altogether.
Read the full article about Georgia's first need-based aid for public institutions by Bridget Goodman at The Daily Yonder.