LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—The Arkansas Department of Higher Education is hiring 20 temporary workers to help process the thousands of scholarships the state has received for lottery-funded scholarships, state officials announced Friday.
Higher Education Director Jim Purcell said the workers will be hired through Aug. 10 to help with the applications. More than 53,000 students have applied for the scholarships.
Purcell said the department will ask the state lottery commission to reimburse the department about $80,000 for the hires.
This is the first school year in which proceeds from the state lottery are being used to fund the state Academic Challenge scholarship. The program is to provide for 28,000 scholarships - $5,000 for students in four-year programs and $2,500 for students in community colleges.
But the Arkansas Higher Education Department also this year streamlined its application system for all scholarships, resulting in five times more scholarship applications than students submitted last year.
A year ago, the agency processed 23,105 scholarship applications, with 7,654 for Academic Challenge scholarship. This year, students submitted more than 125,000 applications, with more than 53,000 for Academic Challenge money.
Gov. Mike Beebe's office said that the temporary hires were approved after discussions between his office, the Department of Higher Education and other state agencies. The Department of Education has offered office space, computer equipment and personnel to help with the applications.
Purcell said he didn't believe the department would need to permanently hire more staff to handle the applications.
"Right now I think we're feeling that if we just expedite the process with lots of people at the correct time we can make the process work," Purcell said.
Most of the applications for the scholarships have come from traditional high school graduates and have been processed electronically. More than two-thirds of the applications are from current college students and nontraditional students, and those must be reviewed by hand to determine eligibility and priority ranking.
Voters approved the lottery in 2008 to fund college scholarships. The state began selling tickets last year
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