Who loses HOPE? Attrition from Georgia's College Scholarship program

Georgia's lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship program provides free tuition to in-state students who can maintain a B average at state universities, Howev er, roughly half of HOPE Scholars lose their support after their freshman y ear. This study employs student-level administrative data to identify the o bserved characteristics that systematically relate to scholarship attrition . Conditional on measures of student ability, there are not statistically s ignificant differences between white, black, and Hispanic students. However , there are dramatic differences across academic disciplines. Students majo ring in science, engineering, and computing are 21 to 51 percent more likel y to lose their HOPE Scholarships than students in other disciplines.