SC Students See LIFE Scholarships Eroding

When Josh Crowley left Greer to go to the University of South Carolina, he knew he needed to keep his 3.0 grade point average so he could keep his LIFE scholarship.

"That's very important," the senior at USC says. "My parents always told me, 'LIFE Scholarship, that's something that you have to keep.'"

But as important as that $5,000 a year scholarship is to his ability to pay for college, the LIFE scholarship's power has eroded.

When the South Carolina Education Lottery started in 2002, tuition at Clemson was $5,834 a year and at USC it was $4,984, so the $5,000 LIFE paid all, or almost all, of a student's tuition.

The LIFE scholarship is still $5,000, but now tuition at Clemson is $12,346 and it's $9,786 at USC. So in 8 years, the scholarship has gone from covering just about all of a student's tuition to covering only about half, if that.

"I do think that that's something state lawmakers should take into consideration, the fact that it doesn't cover barely half of our tuition and it kind of puts a burden on us to find other funding," Crowley says.

State lawmakers did not build into the LIFE scholarship any kind of inflation factor or way to keep up with tuition rates. That's because inflation and tuition continue to go up, while the amount of money any lottery brings in typically rises the first few years, levels off and then declines.

Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Piedmont, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee that handles the state budget, says, ”I don’t know that we’re going to be able to revisit it. It’s an open-ended account and already $30 million of the General Fund is going to lottery scholarships now. So I don’t know that we’ll have any additional funds to put into it (LIFE scholarships) to make it a higher amount.”

He also says adding money to LIFE scholarships would have to mean taking money from some other area of education funded by the lottery, like K-5 enhancement programs.

Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, says instead of worrying about the amount students get from LIFE scholarships, lawmakers will have to focus on rising tuition.

"Higher ed has to stop spending money like crazy," he says. "The loser is the student. They're out of pocket now the same amount as 10 years ago before there was the LIFE scholarship."

Officials at colleges and universities around the state say they've had to raise tuition to make up for the money they've lost from state budget cuts and to maintain academic quality.

But Rep. Cooper says it's also unlikely lawmakers will be able to give higher education more money to help keep tuition increases down. “There’s no way to give them more money without cutting it from some other area, and there’s really nowhere to cut it from,” he says.

Former Gov. Jim Hodges, who ran for governor on a platform of creating the state lottery, says, "LIFE impacts a small number of students. It really hits people who get HOPE scholarships or go to technical colleges."

The HOPE scholarship is for only one year, after which a student may be eligible for a LIFE scholarship. The HOPE's requirements are not as stringent as the LIFE's, requiring only a 3.0 GPA. To get a LIFE scholarship, a student has to meet two of three requirements: a 3.0 GPA, 1100 on the math and English portions of the SAT or 24 on the ACT, or graduated in the top 30 percent of his class.

The HOPE scholarship is worth $2,800.