10,000 students receive lottery scholarship

More than 10,000 new Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship recipients were notified Monday of their awards from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, according to a department news release.

Based on academic achievement, the Challenge scholarship – commonly known as the lottery scholarship – provides new 2013 recipients with funds to offset the costs of attending any Arkansas university pursuant to Act 234 of 2013 of the Arkansas General Assembly:
• $2,000 freshman year;
• $3,000 sophomore year;
• $4,000 junior year and,
• $5,000 senior year, as long as renewal requirements are met.

Those attending a two-year college will receive $2,000 for freshman and sophomore year. Previous recipients of the scholarship will continue to receive the amounts stipulated in their original award.

“We appreciate the members of the 89th General Assembly for working to try and ensure the long term stability of the program and make the most prudent decisions to help serve the most Arkansans possible with the scholarship,” Shane Broadway, interim director at ADHE, said in the statement. “This money will help Arkansas families better shoulder the burden of tuition and fees and help educate more of our workforce for the future.”

MORE AVAILABLE
There are still more than 6,000 incomplete applications for students who are likely eligible for the scholarship, Broadway added, and those students have until June 1 to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the YOUniversal scholarship application at www.adhe.edu, and provide high school transcripts and ACT scores.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education offers more than 20 additional scholarship programs. The deadline to apply for this academic year is June 1.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education is responsible for carrying out the policy directives of the AHECB, approving and reviewing college and university academic programs and developing funding recommendations for the state’s 11 public universities and 22 public two-year colleges as well as several other post-secondary entities.

LOTTERY HISTORY
Lottery sales began Sept. 28, 2009, with the program generating an average of $7.9 Million per month in scholarships for Arkansas students.

On Feb. 19, Lottery Director Bishop Woosley issued a statement saying the program had delivered more than $321 million for the Education Trust Fund to finance 94,000 Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarships. He said the lottery has sold more than $1.5 billion in tickets and paid commissions of about $85 million to the 1,873 lottery retailers around Arkansas.

With the program completing its third year, lottery officials have used the anniversary to promote what they see as benefits of the program.

Link here for the March update from the commission on lottery impacts in the Northwest Arkansas and Fort Smith areas.

In its most recent full fiscal year (July 2011-June 2012), Arkansas Lottery Scholarship Program posted record earnings of more than $474 million for the fiscal year ended June 30 – $10 million more than the previous year – earnings the past few months have been below previous month-to-month totals.