Hope Fades on Georgia's Free College Tuition Program

The Mega Millions jackpot may be doing just fine, but a lottery deficit in Georgia could put college out of reach for many students expecting to use a state financial-aid program to fund their higher education.

Georgia's Hope scholarship program, the country's largest merit-based college scholarship program, promises four years of free college tuition to any Georgia high school student who maintains at least a 3.0 grade average. The program, which began in 1993, has historically been financed by the state lottery. But budget predictions estimate that the lottery will be down $243 million this year and $317 million next, according to The New York Times.

Hope scholarships give students as much as $6,000 a year for tuition, fees and books. Since its inception, the program has handed 1.3 million Georgia students $5.6 billion in funding. Students have to maintain at least a 3.0 average while in college to keep the scholarship.

College students visit between classes at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, December 8, 2008.

The Christian Science Monitor / Getty Images

College students visit between classes at the University of Georgia in Athens on Dec. 8, 2008. A lottery deficit in Georgia could put higher education out of reach for many students expecting to use the state's Hope scholarship program.

The impending shortfalls shouldn't be a surprise to legislators, who were warned as early as 2003 that the lottery would have trouble continuing to fully fund Hope as well as the universal pre-kindergarten program it also supports, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Last year, the state had to dip into millions of dollars of reserve funds to cover the scholarships.

"Undoubtedly, this is, in every sense of the word, a very strongly ingrained entitlement for a certain segment of voters, and politicians are indeed reluctant to touch it," Christopher Cornwell, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia, told the Times.

Legislators are considering cutting the college financing to 80 or 90 percent as one way of keeping Hope alive. They may also raise the required GPA (not a popular idea with Gov.-elect Nathan Deal,) take SAT and ACT scores into account, or decide to give each student the same amount of funding.

Maureen Downey writes on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Get Schooled blog:

No one likes my money-saving idea -- once students lose HOPE in college, they can't regain it. Parents tell me about their son's killer semester at Tech or their daughter's bad spell at UGA and argue that students deserve a second chance at HOPE.

I counter that students need to learn that sometimes there are no second chances. Otherwise, students may be forced to learn another tough lesson: There are no free lunches or tuition anymore, either.

A lesson the Georgia state Legislature is also learning this month.