Some hope for tuition bills

In Athens, Ga. there's a lot of hope to go around. But not just the kind of hope that appears in gushy Hallmark cards which wish people good luck in the form of cute little kittens wearing glasses and hats. In Georgia, hope comes in the surprising form of cold hard cash. At the University of Georgia, hope means more than Hallmark gooeyness -- it translates to a hefty financial incentive through the nine-year-old Hope Scholarship fund, a free-tuition program used by the majority of the freshman class at state schools in Georgia. The Hope Scholarship pays for all tuition and fees at any state college or university for Georgia residents with at least a B average. Funded by the proceeds from Georgia's state lottery, the program has forced students to work harder, strive for higher SAT scores and has kept many of Georgia's best and brightest students in the state through its enormous financial incentive program. For all intents and purposes, the Hope Scholarship has achieved what it set out to accomplish -- it has created a merit-based scholarship program which has encouraged students to work harder to maintain their scholarships, "to be better prepared for class" according to their professors, and to invest more thought into their future. It has allowed students to attend college for free as long as they keep their grades at a certain standard. The idea of a scholarship program for students based on merit is not particularly novel or interesting. After all, various and diverse grants and scholarship programs across the United States provide thousands of students with the opportunity to learn at a lower cost. State schools across the nation promised each of us lower tuition rates than we pay at Penn. At a first glance, Georgia hasn't opened any scholarship doors that haven't already been swinging wide open for quite some time. What Georgia has done though (with 13 other states following suit) is create a program which awards students four years paid tuition not for being utterly amazing at everything they do at college, but for simply being pretty darn good by maintaining a B average. The Hope Scholarship separates itself from other scholarship programs because it gives everyone an equal chance at achieving four years of free tuition. All they have to do is work for the B. Allegedly, right now each one of us has a "fair chance" at receiving scholarships such as these. All we have to do is apply, right? But what's the likelihood of your receiving a scholarship comparable to four years of paid tuition if you have only maintained good grades, while your competitors have not only achieved a high GPA, but also have spent their summers in clinics in Ghana researching AIDS? What are the chances that you will receive four years of paid tuition with good grades alone while your competitors have maintained good grades and done field work in Pakistani journalism? The Hope Scholarship gets rid of the superfluous extracurricular activities that make most scholarships more competitive; based on grades alone, it offers each student an equal chance at free tuition, with no minimum amount of recipients. Maybe it's time for hope to hit Penn. Admittedly, a Hope Scholarship equivalent at Penn couldn't be paid for by the state lottery; as a private university, Pennsylvania has no obligation to fund our education. Similarly, to give free tuition to every student who achieves a B average would be excessive as many students at Penn have this kind of GPA or higher. And the very thought of Penn paying for our entire four years of education is so ridiculous it's barely worth writing on paper. (A sidenote: Harvard says they have a large enough endowment to pay for all their students' tuition in perpetuity. Maybe it's not such a ridiculous idea, even considering Penn's recent endowment woes.) But could Penn feasibly make a scholarship program which would award students a sale price on their yearly tuition based on grades alone? If students maintain a B+ orA- average (attainable, but still a standard that forces students to work for it), why not award them a discount in tuition costs? Full discounts are obviously absurd, especially in light of Penn's recent endowment troubles. But would a cut of $3,000 (less than 10 percent) for students with a 3.5 or higher make Penn destitute? Hope doesn't have to be Hallmark cards alone -- hope could come to Penn through following the lead of other innovative universities. Maybe it's time for hope, and lower tuition costs, to hit this University.

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