Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Soon after Matt Hudson entered the Foster Child Education Assistance program in 2005, he noticed some major flaws in the system.
As a former foster child, Matt was receiving a tuition waver to attend the University. But although the program would waive tuition for a full eight semesters, or enough to graduate from a standard undergraduate degree program, this only applied until the semester of the student’s 21st birthday. And the program was limited to a maximum of five recipients per college.
Matt Hudson was the longest acting member of the Kansas Youth Advisory Council. He attended the University and is now studying law at Washburn University in Topeka.
“It was really limited in a lot of ways,” Matt said. “It would be nearly impossible to get the eight semesters in before you turned 21.”
But even more important, Matt said, was the fact that the tuition waiver wasn’t really a waiver at all. In fact, state colleges were waiving only 20 percent of the cost of tuition. The rest was being paid by education training vouchers, or ETVs, that would otherwise have benefitted foster children in other ways.
“The state was using the same ETV funds to pay for the rest of the tuition. It was like double dipping, a big ‘no-no’,” Matt said. “But it was what they had been doing.”
In February 2006, Matt was asked to testify before legislators in support of the existing program and the changes proposed under a new Foster Child Educational Assistance Act.
“It didn’t seem like anyone really resisted any of the changes that were suggested,” Matt said.
For students enrolling in college July 1, 2006 or later, the state extended the program an extra two years, or through the semester of a student’s 23rd birthday, and removed limits on the number of participants per university. It also ensured that the state would use no other ETV funds to support the program.
Matt said he commended the state for the changes it made to the program.
“It is not a common thing at all,” Matt said. “A lot of states have a really hard time making something like this work.”
In March 2007 after the law was changed, Matt returned to the state capitol to speak in support of the program. This time lawmakers removed the expiration date on the bill, which must remain as is unless formally amended.
Although he supported changes to the original program, Matt said he was still thankful to the lawmakers who originally made the bill a reality.
“The original program wasn’t perfect for a lot of reasons, but it was still free school,” Matt said. “They were probably so excited to get the bill going that they were hurried through some of the details.”
— Edited by Katie Blankenau
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