Beebe calls school fund for parents likely boon
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Arkansas can raise its dismal college graduation rate by earmarking state-scholarship money for single parents, Gov. Mike Beebe said Monday.
The governor’s comments came at a news conference that presented the results of a study on the effectiveness of the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund.
The study found that nearly all the nonprofit program’s graduates are employed fulltime and making more money than other single parents.
Also, 77 percent of Arkansas participants in 2006 either completed their education or were still in school.
That’s an impressive success rate considering only 19 percent of the state’s adults over age 25 have a bachelor’s degree, Beebe said.
Only West Virginia has a lower percentage of adults who hold college degrees.
Beebe, who was raised by a single mother, said devoting a small portion of scholarships from every school in the state to single parents — perhaps through the fund specifically — would yield significant returns.
“The success rate there so outstrips the other success rates that it can, in very short order, turn lives around,” he said.
Jim Purcell, director of the state Department of Higher Education, said after the conference that he liked Beebe’s idea of putting state money behind scholarships for single parents.
Purcell said he planned to poll interest from the presidents of the state’s colleges and universities next week.
While the state has no specific scholarship fund benefiting single parents, Arkansans who raise children alone often receive aid through other programs designed to help low-income adults, Dale Ellis, a spokesman for the Higher Education Department, said in a telephone interview.
For example, Ellis said, 1, 090 Higher Education Opportunities grants were awarded to low-income students in the fall 2007 semester. As of March 12, $ 1, 017, 156 in grant money had been distributed.
Ellen Ingram, executive director of the Pulaski County Single Parent Scholarship Fund, said the agency awarded 2, 450 grants statewide in 2007 worth $ 1. 4 million. Some individuals received more than one award in 2007 because individuals can receive a grant each semester.
Pulaski County awarded 131 grants, worth $ 650, to 74 individuals in 2007, Ingram said.
The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation-funded study surveyed the post-graduation experience of 52 scholarship recipients “who graduated or completed their education” between 2003 and 2006.
The key findings include: Eighty-eight percent are employed full-time.
Their median income was $ 33, 500, which is 14 percent higher than that of other Arkansas female college graduates. Ninety-eight percent are living above the poverty line. More than half are homeowners.
Forty-eight percent earned or are pursuing post-graduate degrees.
Andrea Dobson, a spokesman for the foundation, said the study’s findings support the notion that education is the key to moving Arkansans out of poverty.
The state, however, must do more than fund scholarships for the needy to eradicate poverty in the Natural State, Nathan Pittman, a spokesman for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said in a telephone interview.
Outreach must start well before children from poor families reach college-going age, Pittman said.
The nonprofit agency released a study in February calling for the state to place more resources into prekindergarten programs, improve teacher quality and reduce class size in public schools, launch schoolbased health clinics and fund after-school and summer programs.
“When we are looking at breaking the cycle of poverty, we really do have to take a multipronged approach,” Pittman said.
Paula Rogers, a single mother from Little Rock, said the program made a difference in her life.
Rogers dropped out of college after getting married and having children.
She decided she needed to go back to school after she got divorced and was left to raise her 5-year-old son alone.
The $ 650 per semester she received through the Single Parent Scholarship Fund helped her pay the bills while she was in school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She graduated with a degree in art and education in 2002 and currently administers an after-school program for low-income youth at Wilson Elementary School in Little Rock. Rogers now earns double what she made working in the retail sector before going back to school.
“It’s made such an impact on my life,” she said.
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