Students in Alaska have voiced their concerns that universities are rapidly eliminating scholarships, as higher education funding was recently cut. The main problem is that the universities are taking down merit-based scholarships, on which many students depend to make it through their courses.
While before the cuts the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) was one of the primary income sources for many higher education students, now more than two thousand and five hundred students have lost their merit-based financial aid.
The APS program was one of the most successful grants universities in Alaska offered. Students were able to secure yearly grants in three levels based on their average grades. The highest level offered students payments of more than four thousand dollars yearly (USD 4,755).
Alaska, scholarships and free university
While Alaska is struggling to secure enough funding to continue giving out scholarships based on students’ grades, other universities around the United States have started working towards offering free higher education.
The University of Austin Texas has recently announced that it is looking to offer free tuition to students, whose families make less than sixty thousand dollars (USD 60,000) per year. In comparison to Alaska’s higher education funding crisis, this sounds almost like a dream. However, universities across the US are making an effort to make higher education available for families with insufficient yearly earnings.
According to government representatives, the funding cut was part of the state’s legislative framework, and could not be reverted. This means that students in many universities across the state will not be able to benefit from their APS scholarships despite working hard on their grades.
