Issue Position: HOPE Grants and Technical College

Issue Position

Part of the original pact with Georgians was the HOPE Grant, which is separate from the HOPE Scholarship program, though it shares a name and funding source.

The HOPE Grant is a workforce development tool that was never intended to be merit based. The goal of the program is to get as many people highly trained and into our workforce as efficiently as possible by subsidizing the cost of tuition at one of Georgia's technical colleges.

For 20 plus years, a HOPE Grant allowed eligible students to attend one of our technical colleges tuition-free. In 2011, the General Assembly imposed merit based edibility requirements, which choked off access to our technical colleges and resulted in an exodus of students from our technical college system.

Since then, I have worked closely with both Democrats and Republicans to broker compromises that lift some of that rigor in order to get us back to the original goal of the HOPE Grant: creating affordable skills training. But more must be done. We are still pricing our potential work force out of the training they need to sustain Georgia's economic growth.

As we continue to recover from the recession and attract a multitude of jobs to our state, we have to ensure that our workforce is aptly trained to fill those jobs. The best way to do that is with fully funded HOPE Grants that would allow eligible students to attend industry driven programs at a technical college tuition-free.

If we do not, we risk widening the skills gap and deterring further economic growth, and creating a bubble of student debt among technical college students that Georgia's economy has yet to face.

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