Georgia’s First Need-Based Aid Comes to Campus this Fall — But Is It Enough?

Filed 1h ago · Via Daily Yonder · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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The Georgia General Assembly appropriated $325 million to launch DREAMS, the state's first need-based scholarship, ending Georgia's status as one of only two states without such a program. This year $12 million reaches students with a maximum award of $3,000 annually, while $300 million becomes an endowment intended to grow over time.

Researchers note the average unmet need for Pell recipients at Georgia's public four-year colleges is $11,883 a year, meaning the new scholarship covers roughly a quarter of the gap. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund calculates Georgia would need a $1.5 billion endowment, five times the current one, to match what North Carolina spends on need-based aid.

Georgia's existing merit program, HOPE, already leaves behind many low-income, rural, and Black students, with 42% of students who enter with HOPE losing it by their 90th credit hour. University System Chancellor Sonny Perdue says he hopes state funding will draw in matching philanthropy, aiming to grow the endowment to $1.5 billion within five to seven years.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Getting off the list of states with nothing at all is worth noting, the way it's worth noting when a neighbor finally mows a yard that's been growing hay for a decade. But a $3,000 check against a nearly $12,000 hole isn't relief, it's a receipt. When the man in charge says he's counting on private donors to finish a job the legislature started, that's a plan with a hole in the middle of it, and the students are the ones standing in the hole.

Source: Read the original at Daily Yonder → Scored: At Rest · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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