East Mississippi Community College has offered guaranteed tuition to high school graduates from Oktibbeha County since this fall, but a pledge by a local organization to provide additional scholarship money every year will provide an annual opportunity for graduates from Starkville and the surrounding county to attend EMCC for free.
Starkville-Oktibbeha Achieving Results, or SOAR, has pledged to donate up to $10,000 a year to the Oktibbeha County Tuition Guarantee Fund. SOAR”s funds will be designated for Oktibbeha County residents who graduate from public, private or home-schooled high school in May 2010 or later, said Latasha Hill, special events coordinator and administrative assistant for SOAR.
Applicants must apply for all federal and state grants and scholarships possible to be eligible for the program; then the SOAR funds will be used to pay the balance of the students” tuition, EMCC President Rick Young said. It will be distributed on a first come, first served basis until it runs out.
Tuition at EMCC costs $880 per semester, Young said. Students are eligible for the SOAR scholarship funds for four semesters at any of the EMCC campuses, but must attend full-time (at least 12 credit hours per semester) and maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average.
With the guaranteed tuition program in place this fall in counties around the Golden Triangle, tuition increased by 19 percent at EMCC, Young said.
Young believes the addition of the SOAR scholarship funds is good not only for students, but for the community as a whole.
“It”s an investment in the most valuable resources that we have,” Young said. “Our human resources. It is creating an opportunity for everybody who finishes high school to get two more years of education. The return investment is we”ll have better-educated, better-trained people for our workforce, which will allow our businesses and industries to have more highly-trained employees. The economic result is that contributes to the economy and it makes us more attractive for industries that want to locate here when they see our people are more educated.”
Jan Eastman, director of development for the CREATE Foundation, of which SOAR is an affiliate, shared a similar sentiment.
“This will (a) increase the enrollment of our young people into college, providing a brighter economic future for them and our communities and (b) help prevent high school dropouts by giving our children hope for their future,” Eastman said in an e-mail.
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