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A year after UNM President Robert Frank was appointed to office, the University and legislators have yet to find a solution that will preserve the Lottery Scholarship for future students.
As it stands, Lottery Scholarship funding will run out by July 2014.
UNM Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Terry Babbitt told the Albuquerque Journal that nearly 8,700 UNM students received the scholarship last year.
Frank said that during his administration, student leaders at UNM played a huge part in addressing the scholarship’s solvency.
“Our student leaders last year carried the University’s interests and they did a spectacular job,” he said. “I couldn’t have been more proud of our students showing the ability of UNM students to devise a model that became a state proposal.”
During the spring semester, former Associated Students of UNM President Caroline Muraida and former Student Regent Jacob Wellman worked on drafting a bill that addressed the scholarship’s solvency. Muraida and Wellman brought up the possibility of making the award a merit-based scholarship by raising the GPA requirement of the scholarship from a 2.5 to 2.7.
According to its official website, the Lottery Scholarship has helped more than 80,000 students pay for tuition since its conception in 1997. According to the site, funding traditionally relied on a steady stream of revenue from the purchase of lottery tickets.
Besides an increase in the required GPA, other proposals included changing the scholarship into a need-based model with multiple tiers of awards, and increasing the required number of credits taken to reduce the number of students using the scholarship.
None of those proposals passed through the state Legislature.
Frank said Muraida’s and Wellman’s ideas are integral for the Legislature’s future decision-making process regarding the Lottery. He said he supports making the Lottery a merit-based scholarship.
“In these kinds of discussions, it usually takes a couple of trials before people settle on something,” he said, “I think as we go into the next legislative session, the ideas they put forward will be part of the dialogue. As we go in, we’ll work with legislative leaders to adopt a strategy that works for UNM students. We believe the best solutions are one that balance access and merit.”
With state lawmakers unable to come to a deal on how to save the Scholarship during the last legislative session, beyond a one-time infusion of money from the Tobacco Settlement Permanent Fund, one UNM student said he wants Frank to take a more active role in negotiations.
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UNM student Eric Fitzgerald said Frank should strive to save the awards because if the scholarship disappeared, it would make it more difficult for him to pay for his education.
“Frank needs to be speaking out more and getting involved,” he said.
Courtney Hughes, a former UNM student, said she was able to pay for her education at UNM because of the scholarship.
“I was a struggling student, and it gave me extra money in my pocket to allow me to continue to pay for my education,” Hughes said. “I can’t imagine the hardships that current students could be faced with if that opportunity is taken away from them.”
