Whose PROMISE matters in West Virginia?

We need to talk about the West Virginia Higher Education Grant Program (WVHEGP), one of the state’s biggest yet least known sources of financial aid. Despite being the most widely awarded state grant, supporting approximately 17,600 students a year, over half of the state’s high school seniors in 2017 reported being uninformed about the program. Furthermore, data suggests a large number of students in West Virginia have financial need and could probably meet the high school GPA requirement for WVHEGP, but a lack of knowledge about this program or federal need-based aid deters students from enrolling: over half of students who don’t plan to enroll in college cite cost as a factor. Although West Virginia took a step this year to make education more affordable with free community college, this doesn’t help students with costs beyond tuition.

Compare this program to the better-known PROMISE Scholarship: about 10,400 students receive this award per year, yet 75 percent of seniors reported being informed about PROMISE. It’s easy to understand why the PROMISE receives outsized attention-- the average award is over $2,000 more generous than WVHEGP, and it’s meant to incentivize high school students to strive for a high GPA and ACT/SAT score. Receiving a PROMISE scholarship is supposedly a signal that the student is one of West Virginia’s “best and brightest.” Who doesn’t want to reward hard-working students?

The problem with the PROMISE, though, is that it misses the hard-working students who didn’t have the advantages that many PROMISE recipients have had. Instead, it disproportionately rewards students from wealthier families. Rather than supporting students who need financial aid to make ends meet, only about one-third of PROMISE recipients had an adjusted gross family income of less than $60,000 in AY 2016-17. To put this in perspective, the median total family income for West Virginia for the same year was $44,000.

West Virginia spends slightly over $46 million per year on this program, more than it spends on any other higher education grant or scholarship program, to subsidize college for students who have less financial need than the typical West Virginian. The two big, public institutions in the state take this approach, too: West Virginia University spends about 75 percent of its financial aid budget on non-need-based aid, and only 18 percent of Marshall University’s grants to students are need-based. In other words, both institutions and the state prioritize rewarding merit over supporting financial need. That’s important because studies suggest that increasing merit-aid comes at the direct expense of need-based aid. This perpetuates an inequitable higher education system that enrolls and graduates high-income students at higher rates than low- and middle-income students. And should be alarming because it doesn’t reflect the financial reality of most West Virginians.

West Virginia wants to find a way to nearly double its number of residents with a degree or credential by 2030, but you wouldn’t know it from the state’s higher education budget. The average, per-student spending is 26 percent lower now than it was in 2008, and West Virginia ranks first in the nation for the percentage of students who graduate with debt. Research shows that students who have to take out loans for college are more likely to leave rural areas than non-borrowers, and this likelihood increases as debt amounts increase. This finding should incentivize the third most rural state in the U.S. to find a way to decrease students’ need to borrow. However, the PROMISE Scholarship fails to do this; recipients are more likely to attend and borrow substantially more for graduate school, leaving recipients, on average, with similar student debt amounts as non-recipients. West Virginia needs to increase its higher education expenditures, but do so in a way that recognizes the promise of students who might not otherwise consider college or have the financial resources to stay in school once they get there.

That’s why we need to talk more about the WVHEGP. This grant supports students with unmet financial need: approximately 80 percent of recipients in AY 2016-17 had an adjusted family income of below $60,000. Additionally, adult students who decide they want to enroll later in life or re-enroll after taking time off are eligible for this award-- a component missing from the PROMISE Scholarship. This is crucial to the many college students who now tend to be older, and key for the over one-third of low-income students who delay enrolling in college. WVHEGP isn’t a panacea for all of West Virginia’s needs, but it is a valuable tool for the state to support non-traditional and low- and middle-income students to pursue economic mobility through higher education.

If the state wants to meet its 2030 goal of doubling college attainment, it needs to invest in the potential of West Virginians across the state who want the chance to pursue a degree or certificate but aren’t sure if they can afford to do so. Students could make a more financially-informed decision about if they want to pursue education past high school if West Virginia showed that it prioritizes supporting the average West Virginian by promoting and increasing funding for its need-based programs and spent less time and money affirming the promise of its wealthier-than-average students.

Comparison of the PROMISE Scholarship and WVHEGP

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