CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE - Part of a $25 million gift to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is being used to fund a scholarship program for transfer students. <br>
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Under the program that starts this fall, the two top graduates of every Tennessee community college and Dalton (Ga.) State College can get $5,000 to attend UTC full-time. Transfer students with a GPA of 3.5 or higher from any college can get a $1,000 scholarship. <br>
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James Burran, president of Dalton State College, said Friday that the scholarships will give many of his two-year students the chance to pursue a bachelor's degree near home. Dalton is about 25 miles from Chattanooga. <br>
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``Occasionally students from here will be unable to complete their bachelor's degree because they may have too many financial or family constraints,'' Burran said. <br>
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Yancy Freeman, UTC's director of admissions, said the scholarships are part of the school's push to increase enrollment. <br>
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``A lot of the students who come from those institutions are great students and they do well here, but sometimes financial issues get in the way,'' Freeman said. ``This money will go a long way in helping us address offsetting tuition for transfer students.'' <br>
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Current tuition at UTC is $3,236 a year. <br>
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Freeman said enrollment is about 8,500, but the university wants to increase it to 12,500 by 2008. <br>
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Money for the scholarships - about $100,000 - comes from the UTC Renaissance Fund, a gift of $25 million that Chattanooga philanthropists Jack and Alice Lupton contributed last fall. <br>
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UTC Chancellor Bill Stacy said Lupton asked that part of the money be used to make higher education more accessible. <br>
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Freeman said students who apply for the scholarships must have at least 60 hours of college classes or an associate's degree, and they can renew their scholarships for a second year. The deadline for applications for this fall is July 1. <br>
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In Tennessee, where tuition has risen 72 percent since 1993, college has become unaffordable for as many as half of its low-income students, according to a recent study by the Lumina Foundation for Education. <br>
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Some schools, foundations and local governments are trying to offset the rising cost. <br>
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Kingsport and Sullivan County, a farming and manufacturing community of 144,000 near the Virginia line, has pledged up to $250,000 a year to send every high school graduate in the county to Northeast State Technical Community College. The money comes from the governments' general funds.
