Republicans opposed to income caps for HOPE

The head of the Senate Higher Education Committee says he has no plans to return to means testing for the HOPE Scholarship.

Senate Democrats introduced a plan this week that would set yearly income caps for the families of students seeking the lottery funded scholarship.  The cap this year would be $140,000.

Sen. Buddy Carter, (R) Pooler, says even though the HOPE had a cap when it was first created, he would not favor bringing it back.

“I don’t think we should be penalizing someone for their parent’s income,” he says.  “They’ve also done well academically… they should be rewarded for that,” he says.

New projections from the Georgia Student Finance Commission shows the HOPE will pay for less than half of tuition costs by 2016 as lottery revenues, which fund the scholarship, cannot keep up with rising tuition and enrollment at the state’s colleges and universities.

Carter says lawmakers are aware something needs to be done.

“We’re not ignoring this, we’re certainly aware of it… and it’s important that we look at it and we’re going to do that,” he says.