PLEASANTVILLE, N.J.—The number of high school graduates participating in the NJSTARS college scholarship program has been reduced by almost half since the program’s peak in 2008-09, when the state began limiting access to control costs.
Enrollment in the decade-old program appears to have stabilized at the county college level, but participation is dropping at the four-year colleges. College and state officials wonder whether increased academic requirements and smaller scholarships may be keeping some recipients from continuing on to obtain a bachelor’s degree.
“The fact that it is less generous makes it less of a motivating factor to continue,” Paul Shelly, spokesman for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, told The Press of Atlantic City.
The number of NJSTARS recipients dropped from more than 5,700 to a projected 3,000 between 2008-2009 and the 2014-2015 projections. The number of county college participants is expected to drop slightly from 1,900 this year to 1,800 in 2014-15. But the number of four-year college recipients is projected to plummet from 1,844 to 1,200 next year, according to state budget projections.
State funding for the program has also declined by more than half in the past five years, from a high of $18 million in 2008-2009 to just more than $8.5 million proposed for 2014-15, according to the state budget and the annual report of the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, which administers the program. The state budget proposal says the funds are enough to cover all participants.
To a large extent, the enrollment decrease reflects changes in the scholarship’s eligibility and funding.
The New Jersey Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship, or NJSTARS, began in 2004-05 as a program to help needy students and encourage top students to stay in-state for college. The program guaranteed free tuition and fees at local community colleges to the top 20 percent of students in their high school graduating class.
