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Sensing the urgency of the Lottery Scholarship’s solvency issue, state and student officials convened at the Student Union Building to discuss possible solutions Saturday morning.
The summit was organized by the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico.
José Garcia, secretary of the New Mexico Higher Education Department (NMHED), said in a presentation the scholarship will continue to receive a $40 million revenue stream from lottery sales. But he said that relying on those sales without additional funding from the Legislature will result in a funding shortfall of about $20 million next year, using this year’s Lottery Scholarship numbers.
“What we have here is a sad scenario, which we have so far a flat revenue stream coming in,” he said. “We have rolling demand as for money for Lottery Scholarship purposes as tuition rates go up. We want a program that’s simple to administer, simple to understand and requires some flexibility.”
Garcia said that according to data from NMHED, New Mexico ranks dead last among the 50 states in terms of the “improvement of educated residents in the state.” And the scarce funding for the Lottery will not help alleviate this status, he said.
“Every state in the nation did better than we do in expanding the proportion of people with a college degree,” he said. “For the first time in New Mexico history, the 2010 census tells us that the older generation in New Mexico, or people from 45 to 65, is better educated than the younger generation. There’s something really wrong with this picture.”
To increase sustainability of the Lottery funding, the Legislature should find ways to better allocate the scholarship instead of cutting the amount provided to recipients, Garcia said.
Garcia said one solution that lawmakers have been talking about is to increase the grade point average requirement of the scholarship. At the moment, students must have a GPA of at least 2.5 to keep the scholarship, he said.
But he said that 11 percent of New Mexico higher education students have a GPA between 2.5 and 2.75, and 12 percent have a GPA between 2.75 and 3.0. He said increasing the GPA would take away help from these students.
In a panel that followed Garcia’s presentation, UNM Parent Association Vice President Catherine Cullen said she is in favor of increasing the GPA required for the scholarship.
“Serving in a school board, I agree that our high schools should prepare our students better before they go to college,” she said. “A lot of parents would like to see GPAs raised. We feel that a 2.5 GPA is way too low.”
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Cullen said the Legislature should also not limit access to the Lottery Scholarship to only students in science, technology, mathematics and engineering (STEM) fields.
But David Maestas, president of the student government of NMSU, the Associated Students of New Mexico State University, said he is completely against making the Lottery “merit-based.”
“There are students who come out of high school communities such as Las Cruces with decent GPAs, but they’re now what we would consider exceptional,” he said. “When they go to college, that’s when they start to really learn their environment. It encourages success and encourages them to do better.”
Maestas proposed a model that would provide increasing amounts of scholarship to students as they progress in college. He said that under this model, students get 50 percent of the total scholarship amount in their first year, 75 percent in the second year and then receive the full scholarship amount in subsequent years.
Maestas said this model would increase retention rates in New Mexico universities. He said the model has already passed the state legislature in Arkansas.
But Malcolm Lockett, president of the New Mexico Institute of Technology Student Government Association, proposed to “flip” Maestas’ model.
Lockett said students should receive the Lottery’s full amount during their first year, and then get a decreasing amount as they progress through college. He said this is appropriate because upperclassmen have more sources of finding money than do incoming freshmen.
And the Legislature should take into consideration many things, such as the difficulty of an academic degree, if it increases the GPA requirement for the Lottery Scholarship, Lockett said.
“In terms of GPA, we should be very careful,” he said. “A (computer science) major is very, very difficult. There are students who, no matter how hard they try, still get a 2.6. It’s not that they’re slacking off. That’s just really how difficult it is compared to other degrees.”
Still, Harry Relkin, general counsel of the New Mexico State Land Office, said that the Legislature should not make eligibility requirements for the Lottery Scholarship too specific. He said all students should have access to the scholarship.
“For us, the broadest access is the best access,” he said. “The only solution, if you believe in broad access, is to grow the pie.”
