How is louisiana tops funded

Taylor Foundation. The foundation is named for the founder of the scholarship. Caillier made his comments to a member legislative committee that launched a study of TOPS, and lawmakers have said ensuring long-term funding for the program is their key goal. The panel is expected to meet five more times in September, October and November, and may recommend legislation for the regular legislative session.

Louisiana's political landscape is littered with failed attempts to change the Taylor Opport…. TOPS pays tuition for college students who meet modest high school and college academic requirements. About 50, students get the assistance. TOPS is fully funded for the current academic year after being trimmed for the first time during the school year amid state budget problems.

Caillier said funding for TOPS has to be stabilized since students spend four years in high school to meet the core curriculum requirements. Without reliable state aid, he said, "the students will give up. Secondly, the student will go out of state. Former state Rep. Charles McDonald, who sponsored the bill that launched TOPS, said , students have been served by the assistance. Caillier worked with Patrick Taylor, the late oilman who founded Louisiana's program.

Caillier said the original purpose of the aid was to better prepare students for college at a time when up to 50 percent of students had to take remedial courses at the university level. Even the U. But it had to cut a number of critical programs during ten years of budget cuts from the state that followed the Great Recession.

Those budget cuts were so severe at Nicholls that the school was paying more to the state of Louisiana for mandatory costs like insurance and retirement than it was getting from the legislature. Without much of an endowment, the school is relying almost entirely on tuition dollars. An English major, Henry has stellar academic credentials. In high school, he earned a 3. At Vandebilt, the requirements for TOPS were drilled into Henry, who is white, and his mostly white and middle-class classmates.

Rodney Woods had an entirely different experience at Thibodaux High School, where about one-third of students are black and two-thirds are low income. Like Henry, Woods excelled academically — he finished high school with a 4.

When the ACT came around, he says that a lot of the material, especially in the math section, was simply foreign to him. He took the exam twice but could only score as high as 18 — two points shy of the cutoff to receive a TOPS scholarship that would have allowed him to go to Nicholls virtually tuition-free. The college preparation that each young man received in high school — or lack thereof — reflects that disparity. Davante Lewis of the Louisiana Budget Project believes that the TOPS program is working just as lawmakers intended when they removed the income cap in And they felt like the same people who had access to Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and cash assistance were now also getting financial aid for college.

In , the state created a scholarship program just for low-income students like Rodney Woods. But so far, lawmakers have only committed to spending about a tenth of what they spend on TOPS for the Go Grant program. President Clune is encouraged that there have been no higher education budget cuts in the last two years. The club matches students with mentors to help African American men make it to graduation. Woods was part of the inaugural class last year and says that it helped him discover both his passion and his voice.

As a freshman, he was pursuing criminal justice courses, but he floundered, and eventually confessed to his CROWN mentor his true passion — photography. Farren Clark, who coordinates CROWN in addition to his role teaching public speaking, says the program has already raised retention rates for African American males.

While the program has been able to prepare students emotionally and academically for success in college, the biggest hurdle facing most of them is the cost.

Louisiana Tech University. Northwestern State University. LSU Eunice. LSU Shreveport. LSU College of Science. Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College. Grambling State University. Delgado Community College. ITI Technical College. Louisiana Aesthetic Institute. Other agencies and organizations. Louisiana Department of Education. Louisiana Lottery Corporation. Louisiana Office of Financial Assistance.