Published 8:05 pm Friday, April 4, 2025
By Submitted
By Yvette Higgins,Report for Minnesota
Some Republicans in the Minnesota House are pushing to limit financial aid scholarships to students who are on a track to enter into high-demand careers in Minnesota.
North Star Promise provides financial aid to low-income Minnesota residents studying at any Minnesota State College or University, University of Minnesota campus, or Tribal college if students meet certain conditions.
If a bill by Rep. Ben Bakeberg, R-Jordan, becomes law, only students enrolled in high-demand programs would be eligible to receive the North Star Promise scholarship.
Bakeberg, a middle school principal, said at the Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee meeting on April 1 that his bill would address workforce shortages and provide job security to recent graduates.
“[This bill] ensures the North Star Scholarship serves students, employers, and taxpayers by directing the resources to fields where graduates are most likely to find employment while also serving their communities,” Bakeberg said.
The Office of Higher Education and the Department of Employment and Economic Development would decide what the top 20 in-demand jobs are, and students entering those fields would be eligible for the scholarship.
Several of the top jobs on DEED’s current list of in-demand jobs do not require college degrees, such as cashiers, nursing assistants, and truck drivers.
The Minnesota Workforce Development Scholarship Program, which was implemented in 2017, already offers scholarships to students pursuing in-demand occupations including health care services, early childhood education, and information technology.
Thirteen-hundred and fifty students received the Workforce Development Scholarship in 2024, while 49,426 students received financial aid through North Star Promise, according to the Executive Director of North Star Prosperity Mike Dean.
Minnesota State colleges and universities have seen a 7.7% increase in enrollment since the North Star Promise program began last year, according to Minnesota State.
Dean said in an interview this bill is completely impractical.
“I think the fundamental motivation for this, unfortunately, is to kill the North Star Promise program, and I think that actually would be devastating in Minnesota businesses,” Dean said.
Rep. Nathan Coulter, DFL-Bloomington, said at the meeting the North Star Promise already includes students in high-demand fields, so the bill would just take away support from students in other fields.
“I object pretty strongly to the notion that the only purpose of an education is to contribute to the workforce,” Coulter said.
Jessica Sander of White Bear Lake, a first-year student at the University of Minnesota, spoke out against the bill at the meeting. She’s the youngest of nine siblings and the first member of her family to attend a four-year college.
Sander is studying history, and she said in an interview she may not have been able to go to school without the North Star Promise scholarship. She said the scholarship will help her achieve her lifelong dream of becoming president of the United States.
“We’re not just numbers in a workforce education,” Sander said at the meeting. “We are students, dreamers and future leaders.”
Sander said that if the bill passed, she would be forced to work full time to afford college or to switch to a major that would make her miserable.
Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, said in an interview she does not support the bill because the evaluation process to determine each student’s major is complicated and would require hiring and paying more OHE staff.
“I will not be supporting a bill that’s irresponsible,” Hicks said.
Another bill, by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, would require students who receive the North Star Promise scholarship to stay in Minnesota for at least one year after graduation for each year they received the scholarship. If they fail to stay in the state, they will have to pay back the scholarship as a loan, with a few exceptions.
Scott said in an interview that students who receive state scholarships owe it to Minnesota taxpayers to give back to the state.
Dean said these bills would decrease students’ likelihood of participating in the North Star Promise program.
“Don’t break what’s working,” Dean said.
Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.
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