Promise Scholarship - Will the Class of 2009 lose out?

On Monday I was with some association directors and the conversation was centered on lack of state dollars. A higher education person shared the Promise Scholarship for the Class of 2009 could be shifting to a needs based program thereby reducing the amount of available scholarship dollars and, the program would likely come to an end after this year.

So, today (Thurs., June 11th) I scheduled a meeting with the Chair of the House Higher Education appropriations committee so to get the facts on the demise of the Promise Award and share this news with our members in an article that is due.

My meeting began by me explaining why the Promise Scholarship, a.k.a. Merit Award, was so important to high school principals. The Representative was shocked. She, nor she said any of the other members of the committee, had made the connection between the Promise Award and K-12. To her it was just one more pot of higher education scholarship money to be cut.

I honestly felt that I shed a bright new light on the issue. Thanks to term-limits none of the higher education appropriations committee members know the history or importance of this scholarship and it's connection to motivating student participation in the Michigan Merit Exam.

"I want the members of the committee to know this," she exclaimed, and invited me to testify before her committee. "This is no longer about moving money in the higher education account, it's about motivating high schoolers to go to college and doing well on their high school MME."

I left the room thinking, I may have just saved thousands of our students their Promise money to start their higher education career.