The number of TOPS scholarship recipients hit a 10-year low in 2024. Fewer students are qualifying for the awards, while some eligible students are turning them down.
The number of TOPS scholarship recipients hit a 10-year low in 2024. Fewer students are qualifying for the awards, while some eligible students are turning them down.
Janna Jordan’s family lives in Prairieville, about a 30-minute drive from LSU. This fall, her daughter Abby Veillon will head to Mississippi for college.
Louisiana has long offered a merit-based scholarship, TOPS, to entice students to choose one of the state’s public colleges or universities. But Abby, who will attend the University of Southern Mississippi, is among the growing number of high schoolers who don’t meet TOPS’ academic requirements. Even if she were eligible, the award amounts have been frozen since 2016 while tuition continues to rise.
“TOPS is not going to keep us in state,” Janna Jordan said, “whether we get it or not.”
Nearly 30 years ago, Louisiana made its students a compelling offer: Earn good grades and test scores in high school and your in-state college tuition will be covered, courtesy of a TOPS scholarship. The deal proved immensely popular. Participation and costs rose steadily until the 2020-21 school year, when some 56,000 students earned nearly $321 million in awards, according to state data.
Then, suddenly, the numbers started falling. This school year, there are fewer than 48,000 TOPS recipients — the lowest count in a decade — getting $270.4 million, about $50 million less than four years ago.
“Clearly we’re trending in the wrong direction,” said Kim Hunter Reed, Louisiana’s higher education commissioner. “I’m very concerned about it.”
The pandemic’s academic disruptions and major hurricanes appear to have played a role in the downturn, as the number of eligible students has dipped in recent years.
But also, as the awards fall short of college costs, the program has become less alluring. More eligible students are turning down TOPS, a trend that preceded COVID-19, according to an analysis by the state Board of Regents, which oversees public higher education.
Some students are passing on college, while others are leaving Louisiana. The highest-achieving Louisiana students can receive scholarships in other states that dwarf TOPS, which no longer covers the cost of in-state tuition and fees.
Now, state lawmakers want to reverse those trends. Bills that will be introduced when the legislative session starts this month aim to expand program eligibility and participation. One would increase the existing award amounts and create a new award for the highest-scoring students that pays $12,000 annually — thousands more than what TOPS recipients currently get.
“We’re trying to get our best and brightest to stay here,” said Rep. Christopher Turner, R-Rustin, who co-authored the bill. “I just want to see us educate and take care of our own.”
The Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, which began under a different name in 1998, was one of the country’s first state-funded scholarships to focus only on students’ academic achievement and not their financial need. Today, Louisiana spends nine times the national average on merit-only aid, according to an analysis by the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonprofit research group.
TOPS became a hugely popular entitlement for students who score 20 or above on the ACT and earn a 2.5 GPA or higher. (TOPS Tech, a separate scholarship that pays for two years of vocational training, has different eligibility rules.) The program grew exponentially: Within five years, its cost doubled to nearly $111 million as 41,000 students received scholarships tied to current tuition rates.
In 2016, faced with a massive budget shortfall, the state Legislature for the first time only partially funded TOPS, covering about 70% of recipients’ tuition bills. To contain future costs, lawmakers also froze the award amounts at that year’s levels.
At the same time, the state has cut back on higher-education funding. To make up the difference, public colleges and universities have raised tuition and fees, which reached an average of about $10,200 at four-year institutions in 2024, according to the Board of Regents.
But TOPS amounts, which vary by institution, have been flat for nearly a decade. They range from about $3,200 at most community colleges to about $5,100 at Grambling State University and just under $7,500 at LSU’s Baton Rouge campus. (Higher-scoring students also get annual stipends of up to $800.)
“That gap between the cost to attend (college) and the amount that TOPS pays, there’s a significance difference there,” Dr. Sujuan Boutté, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance, told lawmakers last year.
TOPS acceptance rates have steadily declined since 2018, just after the amounts were capped. By 2023, only 81% of eligible students accepted their awards, a 10-year low. The acceptance rate for the most selective TOPS award, called Honors, was 73% — 11 percentage points lower than a decade earlier.
A study by Boutté’s agency and the Board of Regents found that a growing number of those highest-performing students are leaving Louisiana. In 2021, about 83% of students who turned down Honors awards went to college in other states. Their top three destinations were Southern Mississippi, Alabama and Mississippi universities.
Such schools aggressively recruit Louisiana’s strongest students by offering more money than TOPS, Boutté told lawmakers.
“What they’re saying is, ‘Oh hey, we see your award is capped,” she said. “‘We’re going to offer you what equates to a full ride.’”
Meanwhile, students who stay in Louisiana are shouldering the higher cost of college. In 2021, graduates of Louisiana’s public institutions had more debt, on average, than their peers in the South and nationally, according to the Southern Regional Education Board analysis.
“Louisiana faces challenges in college affordability,” said the group’s senior analyst MJ Kim, “with declining state support, increasing student costs and growing reliance on student borrowing.”
Lawmakers want to tackle the affordability crisis by giving more TOPS money to more students.
In 2023, just 20% of eligible students accepted TOPS Tech. One big reason is that the award can only be used for certain occupational programs, such as computer science, nursing or industrial technology. House Bill 161 by Rep. Jason Hughes, D-New Orleans, would let students spend the money on more types of training.
House Bill 70 by Rep. Ken Brass, D-Vacherie, would give students a new way to qualify for TOPS Tech. In addition to either earning at least a 2.5 GPA or scoring 17 or higher on the ACT, they could also take early-college courses during high school to access that award.
House Bill 77 by Turner and Rep. Laurie Schlegel, R-Metairie, would make the biggest changes to TOPS by essentially raising the award amounts.
The bill would decouple TOPS from 2016 tuition rates, creating standard amounts across schools. The amounts would vary by TOPS achievement level, giving more money to students with higher grades or test scores.
Beginning next academic year, students would get $3,500 for TOPS Tech, $6,000 for Opportunity, $6,500 for Performance and $9,000 for Honors. The bill also would establish a new category, Excellence, that provides $12,000 to students who score 31 or higher on the ACT.
At most schools, the amounts would be a major increase over what students get now. At LSU, which has higher tuition and TOPS rates, students would keep getting the higher amount.
Schlegel said the changes would help Louisiana retain outstanding students who “heavily recruited” by other states “and offered packages they can’t turn down.”
“It puts us a competitive advantage,” she said.
The bill’s cost is still being calculated, but it could increase TOPS spending by up to $35 million, Turner said. Paying for it could be a challenge, as Gov. Jeff Landry has proposed a standstill budget for next fiscal year and lawmakers must find $200 million to keep teacher pay flat.
Steven Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based think tank, said it would be hard to put more money into TOPS without raising taxes or cutting other programs. Yet there are also upsides to giving more generous scholarships, he added.
“The idea that we’re keeping more high-quality students in state might have a cost,” he said, “but there’s a definite benefit of that as well.”
Email Patrick Wall at patrick.wall@theadvocate.com.
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