Lawmakers said they want Gov. Jon
Corzine to restore $2.5 million to NJ STARS for next year while
they explore other ways to scale back ballooning costs and fix
fundamental problems with the college scholarship program.
Students and college leaders told
the Assembly Higher Education Committee in Trenton yesterday they
oppose the governor's budget proposal to impose a $100,000 family
income limit on eligibility for NJ STARS, which guarantees a free
county college education to top high school graduates. The intention
is to keep the best and brightest students in-state.
The change would disqualify about
700 to 800 high school students planning to attend county colleges
on STARS in September.
"I was shocked when I heard that
they wanted to put a cap on STARS," said Lacey Plichta, who attended
Middlesex County College with a STARS scholarship and is attending
Rutgers University with STARS II. "The program was created to
be merit-based."
Lawmakers and college leaders alike
agreed an income cap would be unfair to incoming freshmen, but
they also said there are fundamental problems with the financing
and academic eligibility requirements of the popular STARS and
STARS II.
State officials say the program
has become a victim of its own success. Launched in 2004 to stem
the exodus of high school graduates from the state, the Student
Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship pays tuition and fees at
community colleges for high school students who graduate in the
top 20 percent of their class. STARS students who attend full
time and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average are eligible to finish
their college career for free at a New Jersey four-year college
under the STARS II program.
The scholarship program has nearly
5,000 recipients in county and four-year colleges. Roughly 30
percent of STARS students at two- year schools are from families
earning $100,000 or more, county college officials said. At the
four-year colleges, about 40 percent of STARS II recipients are
from families with a combined income of at least $100,000.
Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex),
who chairs the Assembly's Higher Education Committee, said he
will ask Corzine on Thursday to rescind his proposed income cap
on NJ STARS and form a committee of college leaders and lawmakers
to find money-saving alternatives.
Among the ideas discussed at the
hearing yesterday were to no longer cover college fees for scholarship
recipients, or to no longer require four-year colleges to cover
the entire cost of tuition. Currently four-year colleges like
Rutgers and Montclair only get about $4,000 from the state, about
half of the cost of tuition, and cover the rest. The 2007-08 estimated
cost for the state's four-year schools is more than $3 million.
Courtney McAnuff, vice president
for enrollment management at Rutgers, said an "unintended consequence"
of the program structure is some STARS II students are being subsidized
by classmates with better academic credentials and lower incomes.
Corzine recently said he is open-
minded about ways to scale back STARS I and STARS II.
"It's an open issue, and it needs
to be studied," Corzine said. "And I do believe that when we have
scarce resources we ought to means test. ... Most aid at universities,
even in merit-based situations, is often means-tested."
In addition to the ballooning costs,
lawmakers and higher education officials were concerned many scholarship
recipients are academically underprepared for college. About 30
percent of the stu dents need remedial courses.