TOPS Opportunity and Performance award recipients would pay back their state-funded scholarship if they lost their scholarship under a bill that barely got out of the House Education Committee. Bossier City Representative Dennis Bamburg is the author of the bill.
“If a student accepts TOPS funds, there is a responsibility to meet the program’s requirements. If those obligations aren’t met with good cause, taxpayers deserve a mechanism to recover those dollars,” Bamburg said.
Bamburg says TOPS Opportunity and Performance award students would be exempted from repaying if they had to drop out of school because of a life event or circumstances like parental leave, temporary or permanent disability, religious commitment or death of an immediate family member.
Executive director of the Taylor Foundation, James Caillier, testified against the legislation, telling lawmakers, a student who loses a merit scholarship should not be forced to pay it back.
“The merit scholarships are designed for those students who demonstrate academic excellence. Some of them may not follow through with that, but that’s their problem. And if they don’t, they lose it. But we don’t make them pay back a scholarship,” Caillier said.
If this legislation becomes law, TOPS Opportunity and TOPS performance recipients would repay the scholarship dollars they have used up, even though the scholarship money goes to the university not the student. Lafayette Representative Josh Carlson supports the legislation.
“A scholarship given to you by the state of Louisiana, by the taxpayers of the state of Louisiana, and you don’t go to class, or you drop out, I think it’s reasonable to ask for that to be repaid,” Carlson said.
The measure passed on a 6-5 vote. LaPlace Representative Sylvia Taylor asked Bamberg if LA Gator Scholarship recipients should repay the state if they flunk out of the private school they attended on taxpayer dollars.
Bamberg: “This bill does not take that into consideration. That’s a high school student versus a college student.”
Taylor: “The rules should be the same for everybody. That’s the way I believe about everything.”
The measure heads to the House floor. The state spends $320 million annually on TOPS scholarships.
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