Bowling Green, Ky. - The Kentucky Lottery has reported that they surpassed its goal to sell $665.8 million in tickets, and finished 2005 with $707.3 million in sales.  After prize payoffs totaling $457.7 million were dispursed, the Commonwealth received $158.2 million (90 percent of proceeds) to fund education programs.  It states, “These highly successful programs have provided more than 592,000 scholarships and grants worth more than $637 million since inception.” 

Two Political Science professors at Western Kentucky University aren’t so sure about the success of one of the programs funded by the Kentucky Lottery.  They have discovered through their research that the Kentucky Education Excellence Scholarship Program may be attempting to accomplish two divergent goals and in the end doing neither well.

Jeff Kash and Scott Lasley have written a research paper called “KEES to Success: A School-level Analysis of the Kentucky Education Excellence Scholarship Program.”  In their research, they highlight the ways in which the graduated structure of the program is hindering KEES from meeting two of its stated goals: ensuring access to higher education and retaining Kentucky’s finest students at in-state universities.  

Under the current KEES format, any high school graduate with a 2.5 GPA or above can be awarded money ranging from $125 for a GPA of 2.5 to up to $500 for a 4.0 GPA.  In addition, students are eligible for bonus awards based on ACT scores, which start at $36 a year for a score of 15 up to $500 for a score of 28 or higher.  The maximum award for any student is $2,500 yearly and $10,000 over eight semesters.  Lasley and Kash write in their article that, “the graduated structure of KEES in the calculation of the award amounts and the retention criteria both influence what type of students benefit from the scholarships.”

Kash and Lasley found that for students who earned KEES awards with GPAs between 2.5 and 2.9, less than one-third utilized their awards, and out of those only about one-third retained their awards after the first year of college.  Once students are awarded KEES money, they are expected to maintain a 2.5 GPA their first year of college, and a 3.0 GPA thereafter in order to continue receiving scholarships.  Kash said that in essence average students are expected to perform at the same or at a higher level than ever in college in order to keep their scholarship money. 

A study of the KEES program was conducted by the Subcommittee on Education of the Interim Joint Committee on Education in 2003.  They write in their report that “the goal of the graduated structure is to encourage high school students of all abilities to work to achieve larger awards for college.”  Kash and Lasley would argue that they are awarding money to students who aren’t prepared for college in the first place.

Kash said, “In a political sense the program looks good, but they don’t tell you about the fact that after the first year, students with lower GPAs drop out because they can’t keep their scholarships or some students don’t even take advantage of the KEES money at all.” 

The professors also found that schools that have a higher percentage of students receiving free lunch will have a lower percentage of students earning KEES awards, the average award will be smaller, a lower percentage of students will utilize the awards, and a lower percentage of students will retain the awards. 

“The people who benefit from the program the most are the ones who can already afford college, or who will go to college anyway without the aid,” Lasley said.  He added that in a minority of cases where high achieving students obtain other full tuition scholarships, KEES money isn’t even being used for educational purposes.

Merit-based scholarship programs have been criticized in recent years by many scholars who claim they do not adequately serve low-income students, and actually widen the gap between those who can attend college and those students who can’t by using the funding that would otherwise be set aside for need-based programs. 

According to the Education Subcommittee’s report, more than 61,000 students who were eligible for need-based aid in 2002 didn’t receive it due to shortage of need-based funds.  Though not every person included in that number would have attended college, the committee estimated that a little more than half would have continued their education were the necessary aid ($34 million) available.  The projections over the next six years don’t look much better for needy students – need-based aid will increase by 40 percent from $62.4 million to $87.1 million.

In regard to whether the program is retaining Kentucky’s finest students, the professors found that “15 percent of Kentucky schools have higher utilization rates for students with GPAs between 3.5 – 3.99 than they do for students receiving 4.0.”  This finding indicates that a fair percentage of Kentucky’s brightest students are leaving the state for higher education despite the scholarship incentive offered by KEES. 

“At several schools the utilization rate of KEES awards are lower for students receiving a 4.0 than for those who fall between 3.5 and 3.9…this suggests that KEES isn’t offering enough incentives to keep the best in the state relative to those just below,” Lasley said. 

Lasley said that in addition to not offering adequate incentives, the awards are also not indexed for inflation or tuition increases.  They write:  “In just three years, the buying power of KEES has declined significantly.  The percentage of tuition and fees covered by the maximum annual award has declined to a range of 43 percent (University of Kentucky) to 58 percent (Morehead State University).  The decline in purchasing power will continue, particularly as tuition increases outpace the rate of inflation.” 

Kash said that “(KEES) does neither of its goals well because it tries to satisfy goals that don’t compliment one another.”  The researchers suggest that if the state wanted to successfully provide the means for a higher education to every Kentucky student and retain Kentucky’s finest at in-state universities, they would need to revamp the current program by better targeting its audience or create two separate programs with two individual goals.   

One solution for addressing the graduated structure of KEES would be to “set something up where you have a merit-award, and then you add a need-based multiplier.  For example, high performing students in a lower socioeconomic bracket would receive $3,000 while a student with the same performance from a more wealthy family would get $1,000,” Lasley said.

Whether the KEES program will be able to continue to serve Kentucky’s students in the future remains to be seen.  Though the Kentucky Lottery reports they surpassed their projections for fiscal year 2005, Kash said, “If you always base (KEES) on an ever wavering funding source, then you’re going to have times you can’t meet the goals.”   
          
Goals that the KEES program, according to Kash and Lasley, is struggling to satisfy anyway.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For more information, contact Jeff Kash (270-745-2745) or Scott Lasley (270-745-4558).

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