I am writing in response to Daniel Burroughs's guest column in Thursday's Alligator, "Florida must keep Bright Futures Scholarship Program." The assertion that Florida must maintain the Bright Futures program unchanged is, at best, misguided. The state cannot sustain the financial burden of maintaining Bright Futures' low standards indefinitely. Bright Futures pays 75 percent tuition for a mediocre 3.0 weighted high school grade point average and an SAT score of 970 - 51 points below the national average.
Furthermore, the argument that modifying or ending Bright Futures destroys educational opportunities for low-income students holds little weight. Bright Futures is merit-based. In fact, SAT scores and GPA - the award's criteria - have a strong correlation to family income levels. Many of those who qualify for Bright Futures are people who don't need it. Bright Futures panders to middle-income households. If helping underprivileged students were really a priority, some of the money currently used to fund Bright Futures could be used to create need-based scholarships.
Finally, a college education is a privilege, not a right. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, on average, a bachelor's degree is worth a million dollars more than a high school diploma in lifetime earnings. By contrast, UF's annual tuition is ,3,200 (60 percent of the national average for four-year public schools). Only a very small percentage of students could not manage this cost with a combination of loans and need-based aid. The students who could make the investment but are simply not willing to, don't deserve to have the state pay for them. They can simply forgo the future benefits of a college education.
