Lawmakers restore New Century scholarships

About 2,000 of Utah's really smart kids are going to get all of their New Century college scholarships this fall, legislative leaders promised Tuesday.

Higher-education officials sent out letters a couple of weeks ago to the students — who qualified for the in-state public university scholarships by completing college-level courses in high school — saying the money just wasn't there to provide the promised 75 percent tuition scholarships.

Legislators starting getting e-mails and phone calls from some very unhappy parents, who said their college-bound children were promised 75 percent tuition breaks and had worked to achieve that goal.

Promises made will be promises kept, said Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, co-chairman of the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

And with the agreement of House and Senate Democrats, Gov. Gary Herbert, the Board of Regents and the higher-education commissioner's office, GOP leaders say about $1.7 million will be found somewhere inside the various college budgets to provide the full promised scholarships.

There's probably enough blame to go around, those involved said Tuesday.

Higher-educations sources, asking not to be named, said some legislative leaders were told in June that because of budget cutbacks, there would only be enough scholarship money to provide about 40 percent of tuition to the New Century students.

That was fine, higher-education officials were told. And the letters went out to the qualifying students.

But some legislative leaders say college officials did a poor job, first in estimating how many students would qualify this fall, then by handling their newly given authority of allocating "block grant" appropriations for various programs.

College bosses underestimated the number of qualifying students, and then didn't allocate enough money for those kids, leaders said.

"They ended up with 2,000 students" qualifying for the scholarships, "twice as many as they told us before," said House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara.

Democratic legislators say GOP leaders originally offered 66 percent tuition scholarships, but when Democrats balked at that reduction, the full 75 percent was restored.

"Scholarship recipients will start the school year knowing the state is holding true to its commitment to this scholarship program," said Commissioner of Higher Education William Sederburg. He thanked the new governor and legislative leaders for their commitment to restore full funding to the New Century Scholarship, one he calls a "critical program."

For the 2009-10 school year, all the qualifying students will get the 75 percent scholarships, and legislative leaders say they will more closely watch what university bosses do with those scholarships in years ahead.

e-mail: bbjr@desnews.com