A year before I enrolled at St. Augustine's Flagler College, I attended Mercyhurst College, a private, liberal arts school in Erie, Penn.
Pennsylvania's lottery system is designed to assist senior citizens, unlike Florida's, which is intended to improve education. Consequently, Mercyhurt's annual tuition ended up around $32,000. And that was in-state tuition.
My brother chose to attend Marietta College in Ohio, a choice based on the college's reputation for providing tremendous assistance to those with learning disabilities. Ohio's lottery benefits education, but that still didn't help my brother, who was not eligible for a scholarship, meaning our parents had to support his five years of schooling. After factoring in out-of-state dues, his tuition ends up roughly equivalent to Mercyhurst's.
After five years at Marietta, my brother will graduate this year after giving the school roughly $150,000. If I had stayed at Mercyhurst, my brother's and my combined tuitions would have ended up at roughly $275,000.
That's quite a lot of money for a family supported by a minister and an elementary-school librarian.
But again, I chose Flagler. Thanks in part to Florida's lottery benefiting the educational system, tuition fees are kept relatively low, so Flagler was considerably more affordable than almost anything in Pennsylvania. In fact, Flagler's tuition was less than half of Mercyhurst's.
And I wasn't even eligible for the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program.
Those friends and acquaintances who were eligible and used the scholarship viewed school through a much more serious prism because they wanted to retain the scholarship, which lessened their financial burdens considerably. They worked hard to maintain good grades and remain in good standing with their professors. Many weekends were not spent partying or indulging in classic college behavior, but rather writing papers alone and scouring through textbooks.
But they learned a lot. Tons of them made the Dean's List on a regular basis, and their inclusion on said list was basically understood. I didn't even bother asking them how their grades looked because it just depressed me. (Don't get me wrong; I wasn't a slacker, but I didn't earn straight As.)
I wonder, however, had I been eligible for the scholarship, would I have gotten more out of Flagler? With so much financial incentives being provided, and possibly rescinded if I didn't meet the scholarship's requirements, would I have turned those Bs into As?
But because I was young, nae, inconsiderate, stuck in the present, and somewhat (strike somewhat--very) oblivious to how hard my parents worked to get my brother and I through school, I slacked off that extra bit. I slacked just enough not to get As. I slacked just enough to make the Dean's list multiple times, but not every time.
But so many students with Bright Futures did make the Dean's list. Every. Single. Time.
One of my best friends, who I'll call Alex, was on the Bright Futures Scholarship. She worked harder than almost anyone I knew. She partied regularly, but not in the traditional college sense of the word: Her parties consisted of word games and Apples to Apples. She took school and her scholarship very seriously.
Thus, when she graduated, her resume was spectacular. Multiple internships, numerous clubs and organizations, wonderful grades, countless letters of recommendation, tons of experienceand because of Bright Futures, her family didn't lose a ton of money. Plus, she got her dream job and now works at a magazine.
I was astounded by how many people at Flagler, like Alex, used Bright Futures. They weren't doing it merely to lop off a few dollars here and there to go buy more food or beer money. They were doing it to help their families and themselves persevere through daunting financial timesespecially daunting for those from middle- and lower-class origins.
But now, thanks to the state Senate's decision to cut from Bright Futures (and possibly eliminate the program altogether eventually), I wonder what gifted Florida students like Alex are considering.
Where will they go, those incredibly smart students who have trouble affording college? They're undeniably intelligent, undeniably talented, and undeniably beneficial to society. But they also, undeniably, have money problems.
Without Bright Futures, they'll probably leave Florida.
