The HOPE Scholarship began in the State of Georgia in 1993 and is a statewide, merit-based scholarship program for postsecondary students. The program is fully funded by the revenues received from the state’s lottery program, the Georgia lottery, which disproportionately receives contributions from minority and low-income populations. Using logistic and OLS regression analysis this research investigates the distributional equity of the HOPE Scholarship by comparing the award receipts of postsecondary students in Georgia. The study found that the race, ethnicity, immigrant generational status, first generation college student, and financial independence have a negative impact on the likelihood of a student receiving the HOPE Scholarship. The findings also suggest that HOPE Scholarship recipients who are black or African American, first generation college students, and those with financial independence receive less overall funding than those without these qualities. These results provide sound evidence that the HOPE Scholarship, a merit-based program targeted at helping to reduce educational disparities, may be failing to reduce higher education inequities in the state. Given the established relationship between education and future economic success, these types of merit-based, state-wide programs may inadvertently exacerbate existing disparities. Recommendations include a mandated program analysis to promote accountability among program administrators, policymakers, and the greater public.

In 1992, Georgia voters approved the Georgia Lottery for Education Act, which established the Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) Scholarship program, a state-supported merit-based aid program that provides renewable full scholarships to qualifying Georgia residents who enroll in any of the State'­s public postsecondary institutions or scholarships of comparable monetary value for those choosing a private in-state institution. The principal objectives of HOPE are to promote increased achievement in high school and college and to provide an incentive for the State'­s brightest residents to stay in the state. HOPE has been the inspiration for similar programs in over a dozen states. This thesis provides a broad exploration of economic questions regarding the nature and consequences of HOPE and similar programs and performs difference-in-differences analysis on data from two non-Georgia institutions to determine if HOPE has succeeded in motivating high achieving Georgia residents to attend college in the state rather than out of the state. At the public institution, relative to various control groups, the mean GPA and class rank of Georgia residents is lower post-HOPE, although their mean SAT score is higher post-HOPE. At the private institution, the HOPE effect is positive for all achievement measures used, meaning that the average achievement of Georgia residents is higher post-HOPE relative to that of other students at the institution. These conflicting results suggest the need for further exploration of the differences between public and private institutions and of the differences between the students choosing to attend them. / Ph. D.

Merit-based financial aid has long been utilized by college and university enrollment managers to attract the most academically qualified applicants for admission. Considerable research has been done to illustrate the impact of state-based merit aid programs and other scholarly pursuits have drawn attention to the consequences of merit aid on institutional investments in need-based aid. Less is known about the efficacy of merit aid to achieve college student enrollment objectives. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between merit aid values and the likelihood of undergraduate student enrollment yield on offers of admission. The primary research question to be answered was: What is the relationship between the amount of merit aid students receive from a college or university and their enrollment decisions? The sample comprised 2,770 students at three private higher education institutions in the United States. Binary logistic regression and a forward selection process were used to test a range of possible predictors (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, in-state residency, distance from home, academic qualifications, merit aid awards, and information from the financial aid applications of those offered admission) to determine the relative strength of merit aid in the prediction of student enrollment yield on offers of admission. The amount of merit aid offered was positively related to the likelihood of a student to enroll, even when academic qualifications and other student characteristics were controlled.