Hoping for a Brighter Future
For many college students in the United States, scholarships are essential to obtaining their degrees. According to College Board, published tuition fees for the 2018/19 school years at state colleges are an average of U.S. $10,230 for state residents and $26,290 for out-of-state students. A cost that not all students can cover.
The state of Florida provides students with the opportunity to still receive a college education through their scholarship program Bright Futures. Through this program, students can get their tuition, and other costs, covered if they achieve a certain GPA, SAT, and/or ACT score. Founded in 1997 to incentivize Florida high school students to remain in the state after high school, the program helped fund education for 110,000 students last year by covering the entire or 75% of tuition.
Although this program helps thousands of students every year, the percentage of Floridians with a bachelor's degree or higher is still very low, at 30%. However, this is a 4% increase from 2011, which was 26%. This begs the question, will better scholarship funding lead to more graduates? The obvious answer looks like yes.
