Each year, millions of students throughout Georgia benefit from the HOPE and Zell Miller tuition scholarships. This year, there have been several changes to the HOPE program that have influenced awards for students around the state. For fiscal year 2023, the Georgia state government has increased the award from roughly 80% to cover 100% of the previous year’s tuition for scholarship recipients. The increase will help many students around the state, but it is important to understand the history of the HOPE program to see how much this change benefits students.
The HOPE Scholarship — short for “Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally” — was originally implemented in 1993, and the program has expanded to offer many different opportunities for students. Mike Polak, a former Georgia state legislator and current Georgia Tech Public Policy professor, played a vital role in the creation of the HOPE program. During his time in the Georgia General Assembly, Polak was the head sponsor of the bill creating the program. He served in both the State Senate and State House of Representatives in Georgia, ranging from 1992–2002, and he worked with then-Governor Zell Miller to turn the governor’s administrative program into a full-fledged bill.
Using an administrative program, a power similar to a president’s executive order, Governor Miller initially created the administrative program that effectively paid for undergraduate college tuition for students who hit a benchmark of a 3.0 grade point average in high school and were economically disadvantaged. This program was widely appreciated throughout Georgia, and Polak believed the program could be more helpful if codified into law instead of remaining an easily reversible administrative program. Polak said that the “goal of the HOPE bill is to motivate students to do better,” and it continues to push students today to reach these impressive benchmarks.
At the time, Polak was worried about getting the funding for the program, asking himself “can we pay for this in the long run?” In the end, the funding for such an expansive program was drawn from the revenue of the recently established lottery fund. Although it began as full college tuition coverage for students in Georgia, the HOPE scholarship in recent years has covered roughly 80% of tuition for students in Georgia. So many students are awarded the scholarship that the lottery income was unable to keep pace with the demand for the scholarship. In 2011, as a response to decreasing HOPE awards, the Georgia government began to offer the Zell Miller scholarship, which required a 3.7 high school GPA for full tuition coverage. This restored opportunity for students in Georgia to earn full college tuition for any in-state colleges.
The HOPE program now includes six total scholarship programs: HOPE Scholarship, Zell Miller Scholarship, HOPE Grant, Zell Miller Grant, HOPE Career Grant, and the High School Equivalency Examination Grant Program, and all six of these programs rely on the lottery income from the state to maintain funding.
Although in recent years the HOPE scholarship specifically has not awarded students full tuition, beginning in July, HOPE scholarship recipients will receive full tuition for the previous year of college. Thanks to a lack of spending during COVID, Georgia’s government was able to allocate some of its budget surplus to college tuition for Georgians. The budget surplus, in addition to current lottery income, will allow the state to cover full tuition for all HOPE recipients for this fiscal and school year, July 2023 to June 2024.
While the current full HOPE coverage may not extend past this time period, there is potential to extend the program past this year, budget permitting. If the leftover budget surplus from the COVID years runs out, this new HOPE scholarship will lose the funding used to cover the full portion of college tuition and revert back to the roughly 80% coverage. The lottery income would still exist and be able to cover the program as it was before the recent change. Polak summed it up by saying the “prime motivator [for programs like HOPE] is making sure there is enough money.” Without money, the program will simply not be able to continue as is.
The current HOPE scholarship will certainly benefit many students, but assuming the program reverts back to the previous scholarship, it will stick some students with financial responsibilities they did not have this year. The difference between fully funded and partially funded HOPE may be enough to push some students away from taking on the financial burden of attending college. Although the program reverting to old funding could harm such students following the year of full coverage, the current change will still help those who are struggling financially to begin college.
As Georgia’s state government explores more options for HOPE, the new change to the HOPE program seems to draw inspiration from Governor Miller’s original administrative program. His original vision sought to give as many students as possible a chance at free college tuition, and for this current year, students all around Georgia will receive that very benefit