Only half of eligible high-school freshmen in W.Ky. county sign up for two years of free college tuition

Only half the eligible students in a southwestern Kentucky high school have signed up for a pilot program offering two years of free college tuition. Freshmen at Christian County High are the first students eligible for a program which would allow them to attend Hopkinsville Community and Technical College at no charge for the first two years after graduation.

To enroll in the Rotary Scholars program, sponsored by HCC and the Hopkinsville Rotary Club to increase the percentage of college graduates in Christian County (2000 population 72,000) students must attend an orientation meeting with their parents during their freshman year. There are only two sessions left, and only 250 of 492 have attended, Laura Coleman Noeth writes in the Kentucky New Era.

Michelle Fioretti has triplets -- two sons and a daughter -- who are freshmen at the school. In four years, they will be in college along with two older sisters. She says the program "will offer my family a little breathing room. ... It will give us a little more time to get the money together to let them go to the school of their choice when they're done with Hopkinsville Community College, and it will allow the triplets time to adjust to the workload and college atmosphere." (Read more)

As we've noted here before, the program is unusual in that most students are eligible. The required grade point average is a minimum of 2.5, the equivalent of a C average.